Odds on Sharon Scooping Nobel Peace Prize Suffer Blow

The chances of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, winning this year’s Nobel Peace prize suffered a severe blow yesterday when, for the 17th time this month, he ordered incursions into the West Bank and bombing raids on the Gaza Strip.

Every missile from an F-16 that slammed into an apartment building and each bullet that pierced the skin of a Palestinian civilian put a further dent in Mr Sharon’s aspirations of one day scooping the prize.

The prime minister did not help his own cause any further when he ordered bulldozers to demolish several houses belonging to distant relations of a 12-year-old boy caught throwing rocks at soldiers outside Jenin. Or when he instructed troops to round-up 123 young Palestinians and detain them without charge. Or when he gave permission for the construction of three new hilltop settlements.

Yakob Schloomtz, the PR guru hired by Mr Sharon last year for the express purpose of securing the prize in an attempt to boost the prime minister’s sagging international standing, denied that all was lost: “Alfred Nobel invented dynamite after all, so if anyone would have understood that even the most peaceful men have to blow things up every once in awhile…in order to pave the way for peace of course…surely it would have been him.”

Mr Sharon did not express any regrets over the attacks and vowed to pursue the same strategy in the future despite its repeated failure to have any impact whatsoever. He also refused to accept that such policies may hinder his chances of one day winning a peace prize.