RAMALLAH, West Bank, 28 February 2008 — Omri Sharon, the son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, yesterday began serving a seven-month prison term for fraud related to his father’s 1999 Likud primary campaign. Israeli media sources reported that after court proceedings came to a close, Prisons Service officials loaded Sharon into a police van together with other inmates for his drive to Maasiyahu Prison, a minimum security facility near Ramle.

Sharon was convicted of concealing illegal contributions from secret donors to his father’s 1999 campaign for chairman of the rightist Likud Party. Sharon was initially sentenced in February 2006 to nine months in jail, nine months’ suspended sentence and a fine of 300,000 Israeli shekels ($81,000).

He was found guilty of making false entries in the documents of a corporate body, lying under oath and violating sections of the Political Parties Law. The sentence was delayed to allow him to spend time with his father, who has been comatose since suffering a stroke early in 2006.

In late June 2007, the Tel Aviv District Court partially accepted an appeal by Sharon, and reduced his jail sentence by two months. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that Sharon must begin his jail term.

Prisons Service sources denied rumors of a deal reached with Sharon that would allow him to visit his father. They said prisoners with ailing family members are often granted hospital visitation rights, but such permission is given only after the inmate has been incarcerated, and the request to do so has been reviewed by a committee.

Meanwhile, the spokesman of Israeli Justice Ministry said that the state prosecution will submit the plea bargain agreement it reached with former President Moshe Katsav and his attorneys in Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court today, and will ask the court to declare that the defendant’s actions involved moral turpitude.

On Tuesday morning, the Israeli High Court of Justice cleared the way for the prosecution to file the indictment included in the plea bargain by rejecting petitions calling on it to nullify the agreement on grounds that the agreement did not reflect the severity of the sexual crimes committed by the former president.

According to the agreement, Katsav will receive a one-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the watered-down charges included in the indictment. The court does not have to accept the sentence agreed upon by the prosecution and the defense.

In another development, Israeli troops yesterday shut down four more charity offices in villages around the West Bank town of Hebron that authorities said were linked to Hamas, witnesses said. Israel had shut down seven branches of the Islamic Charity Movement and the offices of the Islamic Youth Association in raids in Hebron earlier this week, charging that they were being used to finance terrorist activities.

Soldiers entered each of the four offices, confiscated computers and files, and sealed the doors on their way out, witnesses said. The army has said the Islamic Charity Movement is a “Hamas terror organization fund operating under the guise of a charity.”

Meanwhile, most Israelis are in favor of holding talks with Hamas to agree a cease-fire and secure the release of a captured Israeli soldier, an Israeli survey said yesterday. A poll in the left-leaning Haaretz daily said 64 percent of Israelis supported talks with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, to end cross-border rocket fire from the enclave and to secure the release of sergeant Gilad Shalit, who was abducted in 2006 by Gaza militants.

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed said they opposed talks with Hamas and eight percent said they did not know if it was the right move. Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 and seized control of the Gaza Strip last June after routing forces loyal to Abbas, who has since opened US-backed talks with Israel.