ISRAEL: Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon yesterday sealed a coalition deal with a hardline religious party, which vigorously opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and promotes the expansion of Jewish settlements, in the process almost certainly killing chances of a unity government with the centre-left Labor Party, and bringing into doubt his stated intention to effect a peace breakthrough.
The coalition developments - Mr Sharon has until mid-March to form a government but his aides say he plans to do so by the end of the week - came against the backdrop of continuing bloodshed in the region.
Ten Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza yesterday, and a soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman in the Strip.
After contacts with Labor broke down over the weekend, Likud members yesterday dismissed Labor Party chairman Mr Amram Mitzna as a political novice. But Mr Mitzna, who held a four-hour meeting with Mr Sharon on Friday to examine whether there was a common basis for a unity government, said the prime minister's decision to choose a partnership with the right was the reason there would be no renewal of the Likud-Labor relationship.
"I am very doubtful that he who prefers the party of the settlers over that of the Labor Party, is inclined toward making peace," Mr Mitzna said.
Asked how his resolute opposition to a Palestinian state gelled with Mr. Sharon's support for one - albeit a highly limited entity - Mr Effi Eitam, the leader of the six-seat National Religious Party, said the issue "could lead to a clash at some stage. But it's so far off." Before that point was reached, he said, Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat had to be "banished" and "terror rooted out."
The breakthrough in coalition talks came after the stridently secular Shinui, which catapulted from six to 15 seats in the election on the basis of a pledge to curtail the ultra-Orthodox parties, reached a series of agreements with the National Religious Party on issues of religion and state. Shinui was holding talks with the Likud late last night in a bid to put the final seal on their coalition deal.
That would give Mr Sharon, who heads A 40-seat bloc, a slim 61 seat majority in the 120-seat parliament. But the prime minister may also bring another far right party, the seven-seat National Union, into his coalition, giving him 68 seats.
Some commentators suggested the prime minister's decision to forego Labour, was an indication he planned to focus first on trying to revive Israel's ailing economy before turning his attentions to the shattered peace process.
That view, however, appeared to contradict reports over the weekend that Mr Sharon was of the opinion that in the absence of diplomatic progress Israel had little chance of extracting itself from the economic mire.
Six Palestinians were killed yesterday when troops thrust into the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun in a pre-dawn raid aimed at curbing the firing of rockets into Israel. Five homes of Islamic militants were demolished during the raid.
Palestinians said two of the dead were policemen, including one involved in a gunfight with soldiers, an Islamic Jihad activist, and three civilians, two of whom were shot dead while throwing stones.
Despite the raid, five Kassam rockets - a rudimentary, short-range missile fashioned by the militant Hamas movement - were fired from Gaza at the southern Israeli town of Sderot in the course of the afternoon.
An Israeli soldier was shot and killed yesterday morning after a Palestinian sniper opened fire at an army post in the southern Gaza Strip.
Another two Palestinians were killed by troops in Gaza, one a 16-year-old boy in a playground in the Khan Yunis refugee camp.
Two Palestinians died yesterday in the West Bank, one of them a 14-year-old who sustained critical injuries on Saturday in Nablus.