Sharon leads again, Opp backs out

A survey commissioned by the liberal daily Ha’aretz saw Likud winning 30 seats in the 120-seat Knesset (Parliament) in the January 28 election, up from 27 predicted in a January 9 poll by the paper after Likud was tainted by a funding scandal.

The Labour Party, which briefly surged to 24 seats in forecasts on the strength of reports of vote-buying within the Likud Party and illicit election funding under Sharon’s auspices, is now expected to take 20 seats, Ha’aretz said. Other polls had similar results.

The publication of the polls came as Israeli forces in the West Bank blew up homes of two Palestinians who carried out suicide attacks on Israelis and arrested 22 suspected militants throughout the territory overnight, an Army spokesman said.

The Army said it also foiled a Palestinian attempt to infiltrate a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip overnight.

In the West Bank, the Army blew up homes of a woman suicide bomber who last year killed six people in Jerusalem and a Palestinian gunman who shot dead a soldier in a West Bank Army base before being killed. Thirteen of the militants’ relatives were left homeless, Palestinian witnesses said.

Israel says its home-demolition policy deters Palestinians from joining militants waging the nearly 28-month-old campaign for independence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.

But attacks have not ceased and the policy has been condemned as a human rights abuse by world leaders.

Palestinian security officials said Israeli forces also razed three homes on Gaza’s tinderbox border with Egypt, where the Army regularly operates to combat arms smuggling.

The Army said it had no knowledge of such demolitions. In Slav, a Jewish settlement in central Gaza, troops wounded and captured a Palestinian gunman who tried to sneak in, it said.

In the latest international intervention effort, Egypt has been brokering talks among Palestinian factions in Cairo with the aim of securing a truce to enable peace talks to start anew. Faction leaders have been invited for another round of talks next week.

But leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, militant groups who are sworn to Israel’s destruction and have carried out many of the major suicide bombings in the last two years, vowed on Thursday there would be no let-up in their operations.

‘‘Our position is unchanged,’’ Hamas official Ismail Haniyah said. ‘‘Truces and initiatives should come from Israel and not from the Palestinian and Arab sides.’’(Reuters)