Sharon regains lead in election race

By Dan Williams, Jerusalem

Opposition Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna on Tuesday ruled out entering another bloc led by Sharon's right-wing Likud, a move analysts said backfired amid public concern about a continued Palestinian uprising and a possible war over Iraq.

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.

Labour, which briefly surged to 24 seats in forecasts on the strength of reports of vote-buying within Likud 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 the family 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.

Labour rebounded in polls earlier this month when Ha'aretz reported that Sharon was being investigated by police for a loan of $1.5 million from a South African businessman to repay illegal contributions to his 1999

campaign.

But analysts said dovish Mitzna weakened Labour by declaring this week it would not re-enter a national unity government with Likud, thus driving wavering voters toward the right.

"Most of the public wants a unity government including, it seems to me, most of the Labour party," Israel Radio commentator Hanan Crystal said. "It (Mitzna's declaration) was a screw-up."

The previous unity government, formed by Sharon in 2001 to help combat the Palestinian uprising in pursuit of statehood, unravelled in October when Labour bolted in a dispute over funding for settlements in occupied territory favoured by Likud.

In the West Bank, the army blew up the family 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.