IT’S a prospect loaded with historical baggage: German troops joining a proposed international force in Lebanon to police the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

A key Israeli opposition leader said today that his party would vote in favour of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s budget, removing the last major legislative hurdle to Sharon’s plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip this summer.

A gunman shot and killed an Israeli district court judge in a Tel Aviv suburb tonight.

Israel's attorney general dropped a corruption probe into Ariel Sharon today, ending months of uncertainty over the prime minister's political future and boosting prospects of an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.