Labor Party

JERUSALEM - Conceding that he could not put together a new coalition government, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dissolved parliament yesterday and called for new elections in January. Sharon, elected in a landslide 19 months ago after promising to deliver peace and security, will now oversee a caretaker government because of his inability to attract support for a coalition weakened by the withdrawal last week of the left-of-center Labor Party. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that he had agreed to serve as Sharon's foreign minister until the election that is scheduled for Jan. 28. Netanyahu will also challenge Sharon for leadership of Likud in party primaries before the election.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's weakened right-wing government survived a series of no-confidence votes in parliament yesterday, saving Sharon from immediately having to call new elections. Parliament voted shortly after an explosion detonated by a Palestinian suicide bomber killed two Israelis and injured at least 30, including two infants, at a shopping mall in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv. Parliament confirmed Sharon's appointment of Shaul Mofaz, a former army chief of staff, as defense minister.

THE DEFECTION of the left-leaning Labor Party from Israel's unity government leaves Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with few options to remain in power. The decision Mr. Sharon makes can have only two outcomes: an even harsher stand against Palestinians in Israel's 2-year-old war with terrorist factions or an opportunity for Israelis to decide whether a new government offers more hope for the future. If Mr. Sharon opts for governing with a narrow majority, he will have to rely on ultraright and nationalist parties to remain in power.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has asked chief Likud Party rival Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly criticized Sharon as being too soft on Palestinians, to be his new foreign minister in a reshaped right-wing government. Sharon offered the job yesterday to Netanyahu, a former prime minister, a day after he asked retired Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, who orchestrated a blistering series of attacks on the Palestinians, to fill the vacant defense minister seat. Should Mofaz and Netanyahu accept, the new Cabinet would be perhaps the most hawkish in Israel's history - with the prime minister and foreign and defense ministers all opposed to negotiating with Palestinians unless Yasser Arafat is removed from power.

JERUSALEM - Leaders of the left-of-center Labor Party resigned yesterday from the coalition government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon over the issue of financial aid to Jewish settlements, placing the future of Sharon's government in doubt. Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is also the Labor Party head, resigned from the Cabinet after hours of negotiations between Labor and Sharon's right-wing Likud Party about next year's budget. The resignations of Ben-Eliezer, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and four other Labor ministers are scheduled to take effect tomorrow.

JERUSALEM - Israel's coalition government faces a parliamentary showdown today over one of the most contentious issues in Israeli politics - the government's financial support for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Leaders of the left-of-center Labor Party are threatening to leave the government because of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's request for about $416 million to subsidize settlements. If Labor carries out its threat, it would destabilize Sharon's government and potentially delay any attempt to negotiate a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

TEL AVIV, Israel - Amram Mitzna, a retired Israeli general and candidate to lead the left-of-center Labor Party, stands calmly in the small crowd in Rabin Square, talking with supporters and fending off taunts as easily as if he were chatting about the weather. He keeps his voice steady, smiles when someone calls him a traitor and, just in case someone in the back can't hear, repeats questions that assail his integrity. After nine years as mayor of Haifa, Mitzna is seeking to unseat Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer as head of Labor in party elections scheduled for November, and then to challenge the Likud government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

TONY BLAIR'S continual and very forceful defense of President Bush's intention to make war on Iraq, his dismissal of the opposition to it in Europe as "straightforward anti-Americanism," suggests that the so-called "special relationship" - that historical coincidence of policy and world view shared by the United States and Britain - is alive, if not entirely well. Mr. Blair's promise to provide evidence against Saddam Hussein damning enough to erase all doubt about the rightness of Mr. Bush's policy gives everybody something to look forward to. But it also raises a question: Why isn't Mr. Bush doing this?

The world is watching the unfolding of the Enron bankruptcy and its aftershocks through local lenses of sometimes surprising hues. The Enron affair's many tendrils have yielded sudden partisan acrimony in Britain, a revival of an old story of influence-wielding in Argentina and a hardening of attitudes about free-market capitalism, corruption and hubris in many quarters. It has even found echoes in an unrelated but resonant insurance and accounting scandal in Australia. In the world's news media, the noisiest fallout is in Britain, where opposition legislators are demanding a formal investigation of contacts between the Labor Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Enron executives, saying that Enron lobbying may have won favorable policy changes for its businesses.

JERUSALEM - Israel's hawkish defense minister, former army Gen. Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, took over leadership of the Labor Party yesterday, giving the fractured left-of-center group a decidedly conservative tilt. The 65-year-old Ben-Eliezer, who was born in Iraq and smuggled into Israel at age 13, spent three decades in the military and is the first person born in the Arab world to hold the top position of the Labor Party, historically dominated by leaders of European origin. He takes over a party seriously weakened by Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak's election defeat last year by Likud leader Ariel Sharon, and by internal disputes over Labor's platform and direction.