JERUSALEM, Aug 18 (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party votes Wednesday on Sharon's intention to bring the opposition Labour party into government, the day after he gave the green light to the construction of 1,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Violence continued meanwhile, with five Palestinians killed and five wounded when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired at least one missile at an open area in eastern Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources said.
Initial reports from Palestinian security sources said all the dead were members of the radical Hamas movement. The target of the attack was thought to be a Hamas leader called Ahmed al-Shabari, but he escaped the strike unharmed.
Sharon gave the green light on the eve of the Likud vote to the boosting of the West Bank settlements in an apparent move to placate right-wing opponents of his Gaza pullout plan. Tenders were published for new housing units in four of the largest West Bank settlements.
The United States declined to criticize Sharon's approval of the 1,000 new homes, saying it was studying whether the plans violated Israel's stated commitment to freeze such construction.
The State Department said it did not have details of Sharon's plan, but stressed that Israel was well aware of US concerns about the Jewish state abiding by the so-called "roadmap" for peace, which calls for a halt to all settlement activity.
The premier needs to bring Labour into the government to assure backing for his disengagement plan which will see all 8,000 Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip evacuated by September 2005.
Sharon lost his parliamentary majority several months ago after traditional right-wing allies baulked at the prospect of such a pullout.
The controversial move was rejected by Likud members in a party ballot in May but Sharon has ploughed ahead with his plan regardless.
However, Likud rebels will again try to derail the project at a party convention in Tel Aviv on Wednesday when they will vote on a motion against Labour joining the government.
Although Sharon has made it clear he will not regard the motion as binding, such a defeat would be immensely damaging and could even lead to his downfall.
His prospects of victory were not helped when Likud bosses decided Monday that the vote would take the form of a secret ballot, allowing Sharon's rivals a chance to trip him up without being caught red-handed.
Housing Minister Tzipi Livni denied that Tuesday's announcement had any connection to the controversy over the disengagement plan.
"These tenders only concern the settlement blocs which we have decided to develop and have no connection to the issue of the Gaza withdrawal," Livni told reporters.
Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat said the construction of the new homes would "lead to the burying of the roadmap".
"This shows Sharon has no respect for any of the commitments he has given to President (George W.) Bush to dismantle the outposts and freeze construction in the settlements," he told AFP.
Meanwhile in other events on the ground, Israeli troops pushed into the northern West Bank city of Qalqilya late Tuesday and arrested the local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, Palestinian security sources said.
And Israeli troops arrested a commander of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a refugee camp near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian security sources said.
Earlier, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli troops in Nablus, medical sources said. Witnesses said troops had opened fire after Palestinians started throwing stones.
And in southern Gaza, two Palestinian militants were shot dead by the army while trying to plant a bomb near a Jewish settlement, Palestinian medical and security sources said.
The latest deaths brought the overall number of those killed since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, to 4,241, including 3,243 Palestinians and 927 Israelis, according to an AFP toll.