Sharon government planning new settlement

Israel's Army Radio said that the housing ministry was planning to erect 6,000 dwellings to house tens of thousands of settlers in a Palestinian area between Jerusalem and the autonomous Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Meanwhile, reports said that another Palestinian had been shot dead in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.

Sharon, regarded as a hard-line right-winger, had declared immediately after taking office that his government would build no new settlements in the occupied territories and would only expand existing ones "through natural growth". The new city of "Givaot" is to be populated mainly by orthodox Jews, the radio report said. At the start of this week, the government had granted approval for the construction of 2,400 dwellings in the controversial Har Homa settlement south-east of Jerusalem.

This step was immediately criticised by the U.S. government. The Palestinian intifada (uprising) which started some six months ago has been directed in large part against the presence of some 200,000 Jewish settlers on occupied Palestinian territory. The construction of settlements on occupied territory violates international law.

In the Gaza Strip another Palestinian was shot dead on Friday morning during a shootout with Israeli soldiers. Palestinian sources said the 25-year-old man was a member of a police unit. The shooting had occurred near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the southern section of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli soldiers said they had detained five unarmed Palestinians on Friday who were trying to cross the border into Israel. On Thursday night, a bomb exploded in front of a restaurant in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzlia-Pituach, damaging several cars according to police sources. Nobody was killed or injured, but one woman was suffering from shock from the attack, which Israeli police attributed to Palestinian extremists. It was the first time that the posh suburb north of Tel Aviv had been the target of an attack.

(la/sda)