Scandal Hurts Sharon In Polls
Polls showed support continuing to slip away from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party ahead of Jan. 28 elections, and police said Friday that charges were being considered against several Likud activists in a widening corruption scandal.
Police have completed investigations of four activists allegedly involved in arranging bribes during the Nov. 28 party primary that selected Likud's list of parliamentary candidates. Prosecutors will now have to decide whether to file charges, said police spokesman Gil Kleiman.
Friday's surveys show Likud losing nearly a quarter of its support, compared with polls last month, but indicate that the party and its hardline allies will win enough seats to form a government, giving Sharon another term in office.
In the West Bank Friday, Israeli troops blew up two-story house of the leader of the violent Islamic Jihad group in the West Bank town of Hebron. The army, which arrested Mohammed Barawsheh half a year ago, accuses him of recruiting attackers and funding terror gangs.
Israel's military routinely demolishes the homes of suicide bombers and others thought to be behind attacks on Israelis. Palestinians say it's a form of collective punishment.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinian detainees rioted at the Ofer army base near the town of Ramallah late Thursday, setting fire to mattresses and tents and trying to topple a perimeter fence. A military spokeswoman said it took several hours for soldiers firing tear gas to suppress the rioters at the camp, which holds 714 prisoners.
Among those at Ofer are about 100 held without trial or charges, in so-called administrative detention. The Israeli human rights group B'tselem said says Israel is holding 1,007 Palestinians without charges, the largest number in more than a decade and a sharp increase from last year.
The group says Israel is violating international law by using the practice on such a wide scale, arbitrarily and in cases where there are only slight suspicions against people. The army says administrative detentions are an important tool in the fight against terrorism.
The political scandal is overshadowing key campaign issues: how to handle more than two years of fighting with the Palestinians and how to strengthen Israel's defense during a possible American-led strike against Iraq.
The Palestinian uprising has killed more than 30 people from the United States, but the violence is not deterring all Americans from visiting. A group departed Thursday for a semester in Israel.
"Something tells me not to worry about it," said Maayan Zadikoff, 19, of Miami, Fla., a student at Miami-Dade Community College. "If God has sent me this far he wouldn't let me die now. And if it does happen — God forbid — he has a reason for everything."
There will be 35 overseas students at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev this spring, most of them American, from institutions including the State University at Albany, Vassar College and Rutgers University.
Five Americans were killed last year in a bombing at Hebrew University.
The past year was also deadly for those who try to help, reports CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier.
In 2002, the United Nations Relief Agency lost six Employees, including Jenin project manager Ian Hook, who was shot by an Israeli sniper during a gun battle with militants.
The sniper thought his cell phone was a gun. Palestinian teenagers had been trying to hide in to the U.N. compound.
Another aid worker, who was also wounded, insists the soldiers knew who they were shooting at, but didn't care.
"I've received death threats frequently from them," said Caoihme Butterly
In Gaza, Israeli troops blew up a U.N. food storage facility, along with $300,000 worth of food and supplies. The army said it suspected militants were hiding there.
Not a single Israeli soldier was prosecuted for any of these acts. Israeli officials say these incidents are the unintended consequences of war, not a campaign against aid workers.
"I do think it is within the capability of the Israelis to discipline their army and to act more in accordance with international law and legal standards," said U.N. Relief and Works Agency Commissioner General Peter Hansen.