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Acting Israeli PM Ehud Olmert during a Kadima Party meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Monday. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners January 16, 2006 |
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Israel's attorney general directed Ehud Olmert to continue serving as acting prime minister Sunday, and doctors performed a tracheotomy on Ariel Sharon, who has been unconscious since suffering a devastating stroke 11 days ago.
In one of Olmert's first major tests, he led his Cabinet in a unanimous decision to let Palestinians vote in Jerusalem during their Jan. 25 parliamentary election, defusing a crisis that threatened to derail it.
Also Sunday, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian mother and her armed son in what appeared to be a mixup sparked by a village feud, residents said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's family told doctors Monday he twitched his eyelids, but hospital officials said it's too early to say whether the movement is a sign of recovery from a devastating stroke.
Sharon remained in critical but stable condition on Sunday. Doctors decided to put him under general anesthesia and perform a tracheotomy on him to help wean him off a respirator, according to a statement from Hadassah Hospital, where he is being treated. The hospital said the surgery, which took less than an hour, was successful.
During the operation, doctors cut a small hole in Sharon's neck and insert a tube directly into his windpipe. Sharon had to undergo the procedure because the plastic tube currently connecting his windpipe with the respirator will start to cause him damage if it remains in for much longer, said Dr. Philip Stieg, chair of neurosurgery at the Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York.
Doctors began reducing Sharon's sedatives last week to try to rouse him from a medically induced coma. The sedatives were stopped completely Saturday night, Hadassah Hospital said Sunday, but Sharon has not woken up.
Stieg said the tracheotomy and the passage of time make it more probable that Sharon will either be in a vegetative state or have low cognitive abilities.
"He's not turning the corner, he's not waking up ... they're having to do more things to keep him alive," he said.
Olmert, seen as Sharon's likely heir, has been running the government since the prime minister's Jan. 4 stroke. He has left Sharon's chair empty during Cabinet meetings, including Sunday's, symbolically waiting for him to resume his duties, which medical experts say is a near impossibility.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz sidestepped making an irreversible decision to declare Sharon permanently incapacitated and instruct Cabinet to choose a successor. Instead, he told Olmert Sunday to remain acting premier, presumably until Israel's March 28 elections, Israeli officials said.
The Cabinet ministers from the Likud Party resigned from the Cabinet, preferring to run against Sharon's new, centrist Kadima Party from the opposition. With only Kadima ministers remaining, Cabinet voted unanimously to allow Jerusalem Arabs to vote in the city during the Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Both sides claim Jerusalem as their capital, creating conflict over any issue seen as strengthening one sides connection to the city.
Israel had threatened to bar voting in east Jerusalem because candidates from Hamas, which calls for Israel's destruction, are in the running. Palestinians threatened to cancel the election if Israel banned Jerusalem voting.
The Cabinet decision - which came in the wake of U.S. pressure - said the voting could proceed as long as armed terrorist groups, such as Hamas, were not on the ballot. The vote would be held under a compromise used in previous elections that allowed Jerusalem Arabs to cast absentee ballots in post offices.
"I welcome this decision," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
However, in a phone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas complained about Israel's restrictions. "All candidates should have freedom of movement, freedom to campaign," he said, according to his office.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri termed the decision as "unacceptable," but said it would not put off the elections. "We don't need Israeli permission to participate in the elections," he said.
Shortly after the vote, police scuffled with Hamas members in Jerusalem's Old City and raided a Hamas office in east Jerusalem it believed was being used for election-related activities. Police detained six people, including three held on suspicion of illegal campaigning, said Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. Mohammed Abu Teir, No. 2 on the national Hamas slate, was among those detained, relatives said.
"Israel police will continue to close down all Hamas activity in east Jerusalem related to the upcoming election," Rosenfeld said.
Hamas is expected to make a strong showing in the election, appealing to Palestinians angry at the ruling Fatah Party's corruption and inability to maintain order in Palestinian areas.
In addition to the Jerusalem voting, Olmert also confronted a violent standoff with Jewish settlers in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron, where 500 settlers live among 170,000 Palestinians. Olmert denounced what he called the "unbridled" behavior of the rioting settlers and said he instructed authorities to "act strongly to stop such behavior."
In recent days, settlers angry at the eviction orders given to eight families living in an empty Palestinian market rampaged through the city, torching Palestinian shops, throwing stones at Palestinian homes and confronting Israeli police, police said.
"So far since this morning we have arrested eight people suspected of rioting, attacking policemen, throwing stones and paint," said Avi Haroush, Hebron district police intelligence officer, told Israel's Channel 2 TV.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in an apparent mix up.
Soldiers, apparently thinking they had come across a militant hideout, fired at a house in the village of Rojib, near Nablus, where 20-year-old Fawzi Dwekat stood guard with a rifle in the wake of arson attacks on the family's cars, residents said. The shots killed Dwekat and his 50-year-old mother, Nawal.
Residents said soldiers shot first, and Dwekat returned fire, but the military said the army patrol was shot at first and returned fire.
The AP contributed to this report.
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