ISRAEL: Isreali officials said last night they believed the US would press ahead with moves toward "regime change" in Baghdad, despite Iraq's statement accepting an unconditional return of UN weapons inspectors.
The former Israeli prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had "no concern" that the Bush administration would move against President Saddam Hussein, come what may. President Bush recognised that Saddam already had biological and chemical weapons, said Mr Netanyahu, and realised that while there was some defence against these capabilities, there was no defence against nuclear attack. The need to prevent Iraq achieving nuclear self-sufficiency, he asserted, was perceived in the US as paramount.
Current Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, said Israel had to be prepared "for everything". And his Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, added that if Iraq attacked Israel, not only would Israel retaliate, but "so would America".
Meanwhile, Israeli police reportedly believe that an extremist Jewish organisation was responsible for planting two bombs yesterday in a Palestinian secondary school outside Hebron. One exploded, and slightly injured five pupils. The second was defused.
And, underlining that the relative lull in violence these past few weeks is as much by accident as by design, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was blown up by the bomb he was manufacturing in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, Palestinian sources said.
If it is traced to Jewish extremists, the explosion at the Ziff school, south of Hebron, would not mark the first time such groups have targeted Arab schools.
A blast last March was ascribed to Jewish extremists, and a small group of West Bank settlers were subsequently arrested.
Israeli media quoted police sources saying that "elements" in yesterday's 10kg device pointed to Jewish involvement, although the police spokesman was less categorical. Israeli officials have ascribed some 10 violent attacks on Palestinian targets - in which there have been a total of seven fatalities - to Jewish extremist groups these past 18 months, but have made no arrests in any of the fatal attacks, a failure that Israeli security sources described last night as "unacceptable".
A spokesman for the Yesha Council, the umbrella organisation representing Jewish settlers, condemned the bombing.
In a speech marking the 29th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israel war, Mr Sharon accused his predecessors of not acting firmly enough against the Palestinians when, he said, they began violating the Oslo accords in the early 1990s.