ISRAEL: Last-minute haggling held up a coalition deal yesterday between the ruling Likud party and the more moderate Labour Party that would be likely to ensure the implementation of Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip next year.
Israel, meanwhile, confirmed it would release 170 Palestinian prisoners in its jails, in what Mr Sharon called a "goodwill gesture" to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, following the release two weeks ago of an Israeli businessman serving a 15-year sentence in a Cairo jail for espionage.
On the ground, however, violence escalated in Gaza over the weekend, with 11 Palestinians killed in an army raid in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which Israel said was aimed at stopping the firing of mortar shells at Jewish settlements.
The latest snag in the coalition talks was over the appointment of Labour leader Mr Shimon Peres as the government's second deputy prime minister, along with the trade minister, Mr Ehud Olmert, who already holds the title. Appointing a second deputy prime minister requires altering legislation.
The prime minister's office, meanwhile, announced yesterday that the 170 Palestinian prisoners slated for release - they include 150 Fatah activists and 50 Palestinians arrested in Israel without legal entry permits - will go free in the coming days. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the releases were also meant as a gesture to Mr Mahmoud Abbas, the interim Palestinian Authority leader and frontrunner ahead of January 9th elections to determine Yasser Arafat's successor. There are over 6,000 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails.
Visiting Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire yesterday compared Israel's reported possession of nuclear weapons to Hitler's gas chambers and called on the government to lift travel restrictions imposed on nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who was released earlier this year by Israel after serving 18 years in jail. Citing Auschwitz concentration camp, Ms Maguire said nuclear weapons were "only gas chambers perfected and for a people who know what gas chambers are, how can you even think of building perfect gas chambers." Israeli officials did not immediately respond to the remarks by Ms Maguire, who was awarded the Nobel prize in 1976 in recognition of her Northern Ireland peace campaign.