JERUSALEM, 11 December 2004 — Israeli soldiers killed a seven-year-old Palestinian girl yesterday when they fired at Palestinians in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, asked the dovish Labour Party yesterday to join his ruling coalition, a move that greatly bolsters his chances of carrying out plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip next year.
Sharon invited in Labour a day after he won approval from his Likud party to do so, an important victory for the Israeli leader. Sharon could be forced to call an early election if he fails to broaden his government.
An early election could delay — if not derail — Sharon’s planned withdrawal from all Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by the end of next year.
Bringing Labour into the Likud-led government — along with an upcoming Palestinian presidential election — could also help restart long-stalled peace talks.
Labour leader Shimon Peres confirmed Sharon called him early yesterday to ask him to open coalition talks. Peres praised the Likud decision and said his party would meet today to authorize the negotiations.
“I hope we should be able to move ahead in the direction of peace,” he said. “It’s not simple. It’s not easy, but it is promising and the right step.”
Sharon has also invited two religious parties to open coalition negotiations, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity. Talks are expected to begin early next week with the goal of quickly reaching agreement, he added.
Peres, 81, and Sharon, 76, have forged alliances in the past. Peres served as Sharon’s foreign minister from 2001 to 2002 in a Likud-Labour government. Since then, Sharon and Peres have repeatedly expressed a desire to join forces, but have been prevented from doing so, mostly by their own supporters.
Despite continued misgivings over the Gaza plan, Likud’s Central Committee voted 62 percent to 38 percent for forming a coalition with Labour over the riskier alternative of heading to an early election, which could cost Likud seats.
For decades, Sharon was the leading proponent of building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and his Likud hotly opposed conceding land to the Palestinians.
Sharon, however, changed his policy in the past year, saying Gaza’s 8,200 Jewish settlers could not continue living among more than one million Palestinians.
— With input from agencies
