Israeli police commander resigns in scandal

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police commander Moshe Karadi on Sunday resigned from his post after a government commission found he should not continue in his post because of involvement in a scandal involving underworld figures.
Karadi announced his intention to resign at a news conference at police headquarters in Jerusalem. He said the government would determine when he would step down.
Earlier Sunday, commission chairman Vardi Zeiler, a retired judge, told a news conference that Karadi must be fired for failing to ensure police thoroughly investigated the 1999 murder of a suspected crime boss and for ignoring ties between senior police officers and top organised crime figures. Karadi was not police commissioner at the time of the killing, but a departmental head.
The two other members of the panel wrote in the findings that Karadi's tenure should not be extended after it expires this summer. The commissioner's term is three years, but the public security minister has an option to extend it for another year.
Terminating Karadi's appointment would "highlight a clear norm for generations to come that someone who behaves like Karadi would be unable to complete his term as police commissioner," Zeiler told reporters.
"If the [panel's] suspicions are correct, this is the beginning of a very corrupt police force, and the infiltration of underworld figures to the police, which corrupts the police and the regime," Zeiler added.
Karadi insisted that the allegations against him were untrue, but said he was resigning to "set a personal example" and spare the police the harm of a scandal swirling around it.
The Zeiler commission was formed to examine whether police properly closed the case of the murder, in which a rogue police officer confessed to shooting a suspected crime boss hospitalised under police guard after an assassination attempt.
The officer, who said he operated at the behest of a well-known Israeli crime family, was later murdered in Mexico, allegedly by members of the crime family because of his confession. The case was later closed after police concluded there wasn't enough evidence.
Karadi was a top official in southern Israel at the time of the 1999 killing, and the commission rebuked him for promoting a police commander suspected in hushing up the case on behalf of the crime family that allegedly hired the murdered officer.
The Karadi case is just the latest in a string of scandals and controversies involving Israel's top leadership. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz recently resigned as the military chief of staff after coming under withering fire for the flawed summer war against Lebanese fighters.
President Moshe Katsav, now on a leave of absence, has been accused of preying on women who worked for him, and faces allegations of rape, sexual assault and abuse of power.
Former justice minister Haim Ramon was recently convicted in a separate sexual misconduct case, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under investigation for his role in the sale of a government-controlled bank, and accused of improprieties in a string of real estate deals.
Top tax officials, along with a long-standing Olmert aide, are embroiled in an influence-peddling investigation, and Avraham Hirchson has come under scrutiny for his conduct in connection with an embezzlement scheme at a not-for-profit organisation before he became finance minister.
Settlers ordered out of Jerusalem building
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli court has ordered Jewish families to evacuate a contentious apartment building in East Jerusalem across from the Old City where they have lived for three years, but a settler leader said Sunday they would appeal the ruling.
Evacuation of the seven-storey building would be a setback to settler efforts to expand the Jewish presence in the city's predominantly Arab sector despite stiff and sometimes violent Palestinian opposition and complaints from Israeli doves.
No permit was ever issued to construct the building in the Silwan neighbourhood, people familiar with the case said Sunday. But eight Jewish families moved in under police guard three years ago, and the government has been paying millions of dollars a year to provide the settlers with round-the-clock security.
The city ordered the families to leave, but they stayed put and took the case to court.
In his February 11 ruling, Judge Eliahu Zimra of the Jerusalem court of municipal Affairs ordered the settlers to leave the building by April 15, and have the entrances sealed.
The families, whose entry into the neighbourhood sparked clashes with Palestinian residents, said their aim was to reestablish a neighbourhood of Yemenite Jews expelled in Arab riots 70 years ago.
Dan Luria, a spokesman for the Ateret Cohanim group that champions Jewish settlement of East Jerusalem, said Sunday the families would appeal the ruling. "God willing, we hope to double the number of Jewish families that are there," Luria said.
The eight families he cited includes one family that left the building because it did not want to become entangled in the court case.
East Jerusalem, including the Old City with its major Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, is one of the most volatile battlegrounds in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Led by Ateret Cohanim, settlers have moved some 150 Jewish families into Arab neighbourhoods over the past three decades, an attempt to undermine any division of the city in a future peace deal.