6 Arabs Wounded in Hebron; Netanyahu Considers Change

Israeli soldiers shot and wounded six Palestinians on Saturday in the West Bank as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered forming a “national unity” government to cope with the Middle East peace crisis.

Palestinian witnesses said the soldiers intervened in the city of Hebron, where Jewish settlers and Palestinians threw stones at one another in an area under Israeli security control.

“All of a sudden, the soldiers started shooting at Palestinians, wounding six, but their injuries were not critical,” one Palestinian witness said.

Israeli-Palestinian peace moves have faltered and violence has flared since Netanyahu sent bulldozers a month ago to break ground for a Jewish settlement in historically Arab East Jerusalem that Palestinians say violates peace deals and international law.

Since the building began, Israeli airwaves have buzzed with reports of contacts between Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the main opposition left-center Labor Party, which led Israel to a breakthrough 1993 interim accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization and to subsequent peace deals.

Netanyahu confirmed what had been rumored for weeks during several weekend interviews with Israeli reporters in Italy, where he was making an official visit.

“I am already thinking about it . . . but I haven’t reached a conclusion,” said Netanyahu when asked if he would consider forming a government with the Labor Party.

“I have consulted with friends, with several ministers in the government. . . . Some have clear answers, some are wavering like I am on this matter,” he told Israel Television on Friday.

“If we are approached [about forming a unity government], we will discuss it,” said Labor Party leader Shimon Peres, who helped engineer the PLO peace deals but lost last year’s election to Netanyahu.

Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has said a unity government is the only way to save peace moves with the PLO and other Arab partners.