According to the survey conducted by Maagar Mochot Interdisciplinary Consulting Research Institute, 42 percent of the 1,111 respondents said Olmert's public behavior was corrupt to very corrupt, compared to 26 percent and 24 percent for Lieberman and Peretz, respectively.

They were followed by Ministry of Trade and Industry Eli Yishai (Shas), who was perceived as being corrupt to very corrupt by 24 percent of respondents, and by Interior Minister Roni Bar-on (22 percent). Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson and National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer shared sixth place.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, 38 percent believe that Livni's public behavior is honest to very honest, compared to 35 percent for Peres, 28 percent for Mofaz and 22 percent for Acting Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit.

In 2005, Olmert was in fourth place. Lieberman was unchanged in second. Livni and Peres were in second and third place, respectively, on the honesty scale last year.

Britain, despite having a Jewish community 20 times smaller than that of the United States, has 59 Jewish members of parliament, including 18 in the House of Commons and 41 in the House of Lords. The latter number includes seven barons whose seats in the house were hereditary until recently. However, the umbrella organization of British Jewry said that in fact, the number of Jews in the House of Lords is even higher, totaling at least 46.

After Britain and the United States come France and Ukraine, with 18 Jewish legislators each, followed by Russia (13), Brazil (11), and Canada and Hungary (10 each). The only Arab country with a Jewish member of parliament is Tunisia.

According to the ICJP, there are 246 Jewish legislators worldwide (excluding Israel), up from 208 in 2005 - an increase of about 18 percent. This is the highest number recorded since the organization was established in 1988.

The organization noted that it does not use the halakhic definition of a Jew in determining whether a legislator is Jewish.

The director of the World Jewish Congress's Israel office, Bobby Brown, said the data reflects Jews' growing success in integrating into the countries where they live. Brown, who coordinates the ICJP's work in Israel, also noted that in recent years, cooperation among Jewish legislators worldwide has increased.

On Wednesday morning, the Israeli army fired several artillery rounds at the town, which hit several buildings and killed 18 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 30 others.

During the artillery firing, seven children, seven women and two men from the al-Athamna family died when four Israeli artillery shells landed on their four-story house in a period of ten minutes. Two neighbors, from another family, were also killed when they rushed to offer help.

The dead civilians and the wounded were taken to two hospitals in northern Gaza Strip. Many of the injured are still suffering severe wounds and receiving intensive treatment.

Before the funeral, thousands of Palestinians gathered at the hospitals and carried the bodies of the killed and put them into ambulances, which drove towards the Hamad Street, which was hit on Wednesday by the Israeli artillery shells.

Relatives of the al-Athamna family received the dead Palestinians to have a farewell glance at them, then the ambulances moved slowly together with thousands of mourners, including militants who kept firing into the air.

"The Israelis are becoming Palestinian blood addicts," said Abu Ahmed, one of the militants attending the funeral, adding that " this awful and criminal massacre would never be forgotten without revenge and the Israelis would pay a very heavy price for this crime."

Dozens of Palestinian officials, including members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)-dominant parliament, leaders of factions and armed wings participated in the funeral.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip Thursday went on the second day of a general strike called by the Palestinian leadership following the deadliest Israeli raid against civilians in decades.

Palestinian officials said no such number of civilians have been killed in one attack as those who died in Beit Hanoun, a small agricultural town in northern Gaza Strip that has been the scene of six-day long military operation by Israeli troops.

Flags also flew at half-mast and streets filled up with hundreds of mourners in Gaza City as more funeral ceremonies were held for three more militants killed Wednesday night in Israel's air strikes.

Along with the funerals, rocket attacks against Israel continued by Palestinian militants.

Islamic Jihad's armed wing Saraya al-Quds and other Palestinian militant groups claimed responsibility for launching homemade rockets at southern Israel.

Israeli Radio confirmed that several homemade rockets landed into the Jewish state, but no casualties were reported.

The Israeli army had recently launched a air and ground offensive against the Gaza Strip, known as Operation Autumn Clouds, with an aim of stemming the homemade rocket attacks from the Palestinian side on Israel.

Though it announced an end to the operation on Monday, Israeli air raids still continued afterwards, causing big casualties including the Beit Hanoun tragedy.

Sneh's comments did not necessarily reflect the view of Israel's government or of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.

Olmert, who was arriving in Washington on Sunday, said he was confident in the U.S. handling of the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program. The Bush administration and other nations say is a cover for developing atomic weapons, but Tehran says the program is peaceful.

"I have enormous respect for President Bush. He is absolutely committed," Olmert said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "I know that America will not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons because this is a danger to the whole Western world."

The United States and its European allies have proposed a raft of sanctions to try to curb the country's nuclear development.

Israel sees Iran as the greatest threat to its survival. Hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel's destruction, and Israelis do not believe his claims that Iran's nuclear program is meant to develop energy, not arms.

Israel crippled Iraq's atomic program 25 years ago with an airstrike on its unfinished nuclear reactor. Experts say Iran has learned from Iraq's mistakes, scattering its nuclear facilities and building some underground.

Sneh's tough talk is the boldest to date by a high-ranking Israeli official. Olmert and other Israeli leaders frequently discuss the Iranian threat in grave terms, but stop short of threatening military action.

Years of diplomacy have failed to persuade Iran to modify its nuclear program so it can't develop weapons.

Israel failed utterly to achieve the stated goal of its prime minister, Ehud Olmert: getting the soldiers back. Nor, in spite of relentless bombing and repeated incursions by Israeli troops, did Israel succeed in eliminating the threat from Hizbullah's short-range rockets, hundreds of which remain in south Lebanon.
The UN resolution that ended the war calls for Lebanon's government to take control of the border regions, but - as most observers predicted - neither the Lebanese army nor the enlarged international force is willing to disarm Hizbullah. Indeed Hizbullah has emerged from the war not only with greater support among Arabs around the Middle East but also with new clout in Lebanon, where it is pressing the government for more cabinet seats.

It is a spectacular litany of failure for a confrontation about which the analyst Ze'ev Schiff said: "Israeli civilians have not suffered such frontal attacks since Israel's war of independence in 1948."

Naturally, Israeli officials dispute this. While admitting to surprise at the sophistication of the rocket-launching platforms and communications technology in the underground bunkers that Hizbullah has built since Israel withdrew from its previous occupation, they say Israel has destroyed most of them in the border areas. Though not disarmed, Hizbullah will not be able to rebuild its infrastructure so near Israel again. Israel also says it has the names of at least 500 Hizbullah fighters who were killed, making a large dent in the militia's strength.

Shlomo Brom, who headed the Israeli armed forces' strategic-planning department in the 1990s, argues that the main failure was political. "Olmert's stated goals in the first days of the war had nothing to do with the real goals," he says. "I was astonished by him and the defence minister. I couldn't imagine that these goals were what the military proposed. It's obvious that you cannot rescue soldiers with a war. The most you can do is to capture people from the other side and do an exchange."

Brom believes the air force achieved considerable success in the first 10 days of the war by hitting most of Hizbullah's long-range rockets, doing enough damage to force Lebanon's government to confront Hizbullah politically, and showing that Israel's threats to strike hard were credible. The error was to launch a ground invasion with troops who were unprepared for determined guerrilla fighters. The techniques used in the West Bank, where the army largely operates as a gendarmerie rather than a fighting force, were insufficient. "We went into a bad ground war because of a failure to stop in time," he says.

While the experts argue over how much was achieved, the public is in a state of shock and frustration. Anything less than victory is seen as a serious setback, and people blame the military as much as the politicians. Schiff says the war "gave Israelis a sense of impotence".

The war's biggest winners were the West Bank settlers. Olmert's plans for a partial pull-out have been shelved, and the political consensus for withdrawal has gone. Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Hizbullah built up an arsenal of rockets, Israelis say; it pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are importing explosives and rockets through tunnels from Egypt in an effort to copy Hizbullah.

"There's a big 'I told you so' which the settlers are exploiting and it's very hard to argue against," says Tom Segev, a historian who opposed the Lebanese war from the first day. He deplores the fact that so few people criticised the war's rationale rather than just complaining about its outcome. Peace Now, the mainstream anti-occupation movement, broadly supported the war. Even Meretz, the small leftwing party in the Knesset, was split, with some members in support of the war, others silent, and only a few willing to denounce the war as soon as it began.

If the settlers were the main winners, Gazans were the main losers. While the Lebanese war was under way, the world ignored Gaza. Israeli troops killed 300 people with scarcely a line in the media. This week's world outcry has at least put Gaza back in the headlines.

But for Palestinians to launch homemade rockets into southern Israel is pointless and counterproductive, serving only to strengthen Israelis' hardline views. Meanwhile, the US is arming Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah organisation for a confrontation with Hamas that risks plunging Gaza into all-out civil war. It wants thousands of rifles to be sent to Fatah from Egypt and Jordan, and is seeking to persuade Israel to permit the Badr brigade, a pro-Fatah militia stationed in Jordan, to cross into Gaza.

Five years ago most Israelis seemed to want a deal with the Palestinians. The war with Lebanon and the rockets from Gaza have reinforced the mood swing that Sharon launched with his mantra: "Israel has no partner for peace." Segev is deeply pessimistic: "It's no longer politically correct to say one believes in peace. Young people don't. It's legitimate to hate Arabs and want them to disappear somehow." Looking back on the decades since Israel occupied the West Bank and Jerusalem, Segev adds: "In 1967 there was a choice: give the territories back and make peace, or settle them and make Israel strong. It hasn't worked. What a terrible waste of time the last 40 years have been."

Gideon Levy is one of the few Israeli journalists who still goes to Gaza - a venture that increasingly requires physical as well as moral courage. "A generation on both sides is growing up which never meets each other. In the past there was a relationship. Palestinians were working here. The relationship was unequal, but it wasn't just a matter of hate. Everyone believes we are facing monsters, not human beings." Desperate words, but they have the ring of truth.

Mr Haniyeh's remarks appeared to be another indication that Hamas and the rival Fatah party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, were moving closer to a national unity government made up of independent experts.

It has been assumed that such a government would present a more moderate face to the world.

"When the issue of the siege is on one side, and my being prime minister is on the other, let the siege be lifted to end the suffering of the Palestinian people," Mr Haniyeh said.

The long-time Hamas leader told worshippers at a Gaza mosque that western countries wanted him out of government.

Yesterday, Mr Abbas spoke by telephone to his main political rival, the Hamas supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal - their first conversation for months.

The Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said their discussion was proof the two were in agreement on the shape of the new government.

However, there have been weeks of turbulent negotiations that have failed to bring results, and a further breakdown in talks still appeared to be possible.

Western governments and Israel have withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and tax revenues since Hamas took power in March.

The sanctions have prevented Hamas from paying a large portion of the salaries owed to 165,000 government employees, causing widespread hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Countries including the US have said they would not lift sanctions unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and accepted past peace deals.

The programme of the proposed new unity government is vague on the key issue of recognising Israel and calling for a Palestinian state on only lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, yesterday expressed regret over an Israeli artillery barrage - which he described as a mistake - that killed 19 Palestinian civilians.

Mr Olmert called for an immediate renewal of contact between himself and Mr Abbas but said the Israeli army would continue targeting Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza despite the risk of hitting civilians.

The death toll from Wednesday's barrage, in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, rose to 19 after Israeli hospital officials confirmed that Bassem Kafarna, an injury victim transferred for treatment in Israel, had died in a Tel Aviv hospital.

The Israeli defence minister, Amir Peretz, ordered the military to "re-evaluate its policy of artillery fire in Gaza", his ministry said in a statement.