ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was questioned for more than two hours yesterday by police over allegations that he took a bribe.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today faced police interrogation in a bribery case that could force his resignation, and critics charged that his far-reaching plan to remove Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip was meant to deflect attention from the scandal.

ISRAEL Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his stunned Likud Party yesterday he plans to dismantle settlements in the Gaza Strip, turning it into a Jewish-free zone.

ISRAEL’S cabinet narrowly approved a US-backed Middle East peace plan yesterday, accepting for the first time a timetable for the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but objecting to significant portions of the plan.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the arch rival of Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, today accepted the post in the government that he had earlier spurned.

Israeli troops blew up a suicide bomber’s home in the West Bank and thwarted a car bombing today, hours before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was to present his new hard-line government to parliament for approval.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday formed a hawkish coalition government dominated

Israel’s president announced today that he has agreed to a request by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to hold early elections, and that the vote would be held at the beginning of February.

ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last night survived three no-confidence votes, winning more time to try to restore the parliamentary majority he lost when the moderate Labour Party bolted his coalition last week.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, a former prime minister, will join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s faltering coalition government as foreign minister on the condition that early elections are held, a Netanyahu official said yesterday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today began courting ultra-nationalist MPs in a bid to rebuild his coalition, which was left in a shambles by the departure of the centre-left Labour Party.

Palestinian security officials said the 250 Israeli tanks that moved into Ramallah on Tuesday, paralysing the West Bank commercial and administrative centre, began rolling out of the town and the adjacent Amari refugee camp after 2am.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he is ready to lift the virtual house arrest of Yasser Arafat, but military strikes against Palestinian targets will go on.

Israel’s tourism minister was shot dead today in an ambush at a Jerusalem hotel in what a militant Palestinian group said was its revenge for the killing of their leader by Israel.