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- WORLD
Labour threatens to quit Israeli coalition
By Lee Hockstader in Jerusalem
With Israeli forces mounting their broadest offensive against the Palestinians in years, the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, faced the rumblings of a rebellion from within his coalition Government.
Leaders of the centrist Labour Party said they would consider quitting the Government if Israeli forces expanded their reoccupation of Palestinian territory and threatened the survival of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
Several Labour Party officials said they were afraid the fighting was spinning out of control, and that Israel was moving towards a full-scale reoccupation of Palestinian land from which it has withdrawn in the past seven years under the Oslo peace agreements of 1993.
Israel maintained its stranglehold on six Palestinian cities yesterday, saying its biggest ground offensive against the Palestinian Authority was aimed at pressuring, but not toppling, Mr Arafat.
Four Palestinians were killed late on Sunday in further bloodshed in the wake of the assassination last Wednesday of a far-right Israeli cabinet minister by radical Palestinian gunmen.
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Meeting one Israeli demand, the Palestinian Authority's Supreme Security Council issued a statement saying it had outlawed the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has said it killed the Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, at a Jerusalem hotel to avenge Israel's assassination of its leader in August.
Mr Sharon said at the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel had no interest in remaining inside Palestinian-controlled territory seized since Mr Ze'evi's death. "The amount of time the army stays in these areas depends, to a large extent, on Arafat and the actions he takes to prevent terrorism," a cabinet communique quoted Mr Sharon as saying about the open-ended tank and infantry operation.
"The situation is very worrying and could deteriorate into warfare," said the secretary-general of the Labour Party, Raanan Cohen. "If the escalation and inflammatory speech continue there is no room for the Labour Party in the Government.''
Haim Ramon, a prominent Labour Party politician, said: "We are reconquering the West Bank and Gaza, and the Labour Party didn't enter the Government for this. It's clear the Labour Party can't be in a government that returns to Gaza and sends our children to the alleyways of Gaza. And that's what will happen."
With Mr Sharon's hardline Likud party, the Labour Party constitutes the main pillar of Israel's governing coalition. Its withdrawal would deprive Mr Sharon of a majority in parliament and could force early elections.
The Washington Post and agencies
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