MIDDLE EAST Israel considers new construction

A Palestinian vehicle blew up today in the Gaza Strip.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel is considering building thousands more homes in West Bank settlements, in line with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to keep large chunks of the territory but give up the Gaza Strip, security officials said today.
In a possible boost for Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan, Israel's attorney general was expected to announce later today that he is closing a corruption investigation against the prime minister, officials close to the case said.
The opposition Labor Party, which supports a Gaza pullback, has said it would only consider joining Sharon's coalition if he is cleared of corruption suspicions.
Sharon needs Labor to restore his parliamentary majority. Several coalition hard-liners defected over the Gaza plan, leaving him with a minority government.
Labor's role
In the meantime, Labor has prevented Sharon's government from being toppled, by abstaining in no confidence votes in parliament.
However, Labor leader Shimon Peres warned that his party should not be taken for granted. "We're not in anyone's pocket," Peres told Israel Army Radio.
Media reports said a decision to join the coalition could split Labor, and that only about 15 of the party's 19 legislators would follow Peres into the government.
Sharon's plan of "unilateral disengagement" calls for a withdrawal from all of Gaza and four West Bank settlements by September 2005. Sharon has said that in exchange, he wants to keep and expand several large settlement blocs in the West Bank -- a demand that has won the tacit support of President Bush.
Drawing up plans
The Israeli daily Maariv reported today that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has asked the military to draw up plans within three months for building thousands of homes in three of the settlement blocs -- Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel.
The Defense Ministry declined to comment.
However, security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mofaz met Monday with settler leaders in Gush Etzion, and told them he would consider their request to build thousands more homes there. Maariv said additional construction is also expected in Maale Adumim and Ariel, the two largest West Bank settlements.
The newspaper said Mofaz told the head of the so-called Civil Administration, the Israeli military government in the West Bank, to accelerate authorization for a number of construction projects in Gush Etzion.
Violence
In new violence today, a Palestinian vehicle apparently rigged with explosives blew up in the Gaza Strip after Israeli soldiers fired on it. No one was hurt, the army and Palestinian witnesses said.
On Monday evening, two Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus.
The targeted attack killed Khalil Marshoud, local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The military said Marshoud was behind a number of attacks against Israelis.
Another Palestinian militant was killed and a third person was seriously wounded, witnesses said.