JERUSALEM, 19 December 2004 — Israel’s prime minister and the opposition Labor party prepared yesterday to form a new coalition government to secure Ariel Sharon’s plan to evacuate the Gaza Strip, where 11 Palestinians have been killed in the deadliest incursion in weeks.
Negotiators from the center-left Labor and Sharon’s right-wing Likud were applying the finishing touches to the confirmed coalition deal before the official signing today, Israeli radio said.
The exact composition of the new government — to be the fifth time that Likud and Labor have shared power — would not be known until next Thursday, the report said.
Labor’s central committee will meet from tomorrow to Wednesday to decide which of their 19 MPs will be handed the agreed eight ministerial posts, which include two without portfolios.
Labor leader Shimon Peres is guaranteed the newly created post of deputy prime minister at the premier’s office.
Other party figures will fight it out for the interior, housing and construction, infrastructure, tourism and communications portfolios. Three junior ministerial posts were also in the offing.
Sharon, bereft of a majority for more than six months, needed to bring Labor into government to ensure implementation of his controversial plan to pull Israeli soldiers and settlers out of the Gaza Strip by end-2005.
On the ground, a second day of violence in the volatile territory claimed another two lives yesterday as Israeli troops continued their most lethal incursion since late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November.
Mohammed Gharghun, a 23-year-old Palestinian militant, was blown up by an Israeli tank shell hours after another militant, Ibrahim Al-Farra, 19, was killed by a shot to the stomach, medical sources said.
Nine other Palestinians, at least four of them militants, were killed Friday after tanks supported by helicopter gunships rolled into the Khan Younis refugee camp seeking to clamp down on attacks against nearby Jewish settlements.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the raid, saying the Palestinian Authority held Israel “fully responsible” for trying to obstruct the elections.
Despite the unrest, an Israeli official said senior Israelis and Palestinians would pursue talks to coordinate security for the Jan. 9 Palestinian presidential election to replace Arafat, of which Abbas is the frontrunner.
Egypt yesterday urged an immediate halt to the deadly Israeli raid in the Gaza Strip, warning that such operations did little to boost hopes of change in the region following Arafat’s death.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit issued a statement in which he expressed “his deep concern over the Israeli operations against the Palestinian people and land.”
At least 50 other Palestinians have been wounded during the operation in southern Gaza, which began late Thursday.
The latest deaths brought to 4,634 the overall toll since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, including 3,591 Palestinians and 968 Israelis.
Israeli bulldozers razed homes, forcing hundreds to take refuge at a nearby stadium or with friends away from the frontline, Palestinian witnesses said.
The Israeli Army said it was demolishing largely uninhabited buildings used as cover by militants as it sought to reduce the number of mortar and rocket attacks fired on Jewish settlements.
On Thursday evening, 11 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded in a mortar attack claimed by radical Palestinian group Hamas near the Netzer Hazani settlement, close to Khan Younis. The incursion came four days after Palestinian militants killed five Israeli soldiers in a bombing at the nearby Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday.
It has been the deadliest Israeli raid in Gaza since a three-day operation in Khan Younis killed 17 Palestinians and wounded over 70 in October.
Masked gunmen and thousands of supporters later marched in the West Bank town of Nablus to mark the founding anniversary of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas.
Group leader Ahmad Al-Haj Ali rejected previous calls by Abbas to lay down arms, saying: “The Jews and Israelis don’t understand anything but the language of missiles and Jihad.”
Palestinians also burned models of an Israeli tank and a group of houses representing a Jewish settlement.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was set to be the latest top foreign official to visit the region on a new Middle East peace drive following Arafat’s death last month, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.
Blair would meet with Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei on Wednesday in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina.
He would also hold talks with Sharon and Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, Israeli radio said, although there was no immediate confirmation from London.
