OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 9 December 2003 — Israel is digging a vast bunker network outside Jerusalem that would allow top government officials to survive a nuclear or chemical attack and see out any war in safety, senior security sources said yesterday.

They said construction began in 2002 amid growing fears over Iran’s nuclear program, seen as an existential threat to the Jewish state although Tehran denies hostile intent.

Israel is widely believed to have as many as 200 nuclear weapons but officials do not discuss its capability. The bunker complex is modeled on similar Cold War projects in the United States and Switzerland. Israel’s Channel Ten television first reported the shelter on Sunday, showing cavernous tunnels under construction at an undisclosed location in hills near Jerusalem. It put the initial cost of the dig at 500 million shekels ($112 million) and said it would take several years to complete. The Israeli military high command maintains a multistory underground command bunker in Tel Aviv known as the Pit.

Israel also braced itself yesterday for another setback in the United Nations ahead of a vote which is expected to see a request for the International Court of Justice to rule on the legality of its controversial West Bank separation barrier.

Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Arieh Mekel, told public radio at the United Nations that the resolution which was lodged by the Palestinian Authority’s UN representative Nasser Al-Kidwa was likely to be approved by the General Assembly “thanks to the automatic majority” of the Arab countries.

A senior aide to Ariel Sharon said that the premier would hold talks with his Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom later in the day over how Israel should best argue its case. “This initiative is unacceptable and risks creating a dangerous precedent in denying to Israel and other Western countries the fundamental right to self-defense,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, a top official of Hamas resistance group said yesterday the recent lull in Palestinian attacks against Israel was just a break between waves. “The martyrdom operations come as waves so there are gaps between the waves,” Hamas chief spokesman Abdelaziz Al-Rantissi told Reuters in an interview. “We are just in the period of a gap between waves.”

A day after the collapse of talks among Palestinian factions on a complete ceasefire with Israel — which Hamas opposed — Rantissi said Palestinian activists were emboldened by Sharon’s domestic woes and US problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Everything is changed. Locally, regionally and internationally,” Rantissi, a cofounder of Hamas, said. “The problems of America and the situation of America in Iraq and Afghanistan has its effect on the situation in Palestine. I believe that Palestinian people are stronger than before.”

Palestinian groups, however, pledged new efforts yesterday to coax militants into a truce with Israel after talks in Cairo broke down, undercutting Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei and deflating hopes of reviving a peace “road map”.

The failure to arrange a cease-fire set back the moderate Qorie’s bid to gain credibility among ordinary Palestinians by encouraging Israel to lift its military clampdown on West Bank cities and strengthen US backing for a Palestinian state.

Palestinian Authority officials said the militants’ thumbs-down on Egypt’s proposal for a total cease-fire weakened Qorie’s position ahead of any summit with Sharon on core political issues like Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The setback in Cairo raised the threat of a militant challenge to the Palestinian Authority, at a time of worsening disorder in Palestinian areas, and infuriated the Egyptian government, Palestinian officials and Arab diplomats said.

“We are committed to the (US-sponsored) ‘road map’, committed to peace and willing and ready to continue these efforts to find a solution. The cease-fire is our aim and our target is to find a political solution,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, senior adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.