JERUSALEM - The Israeli state prosecutor on Tuesday decided not to open a criminal investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on suspicion he accepted bribes in two real estate deals.
The decision gave the Israeli leader a small boost at a time when he already is facing three criminal investigations in unrelated real-estate and political corruption cases. Olmert has denied any wrongdoing, but the investigations have clouded his efforts to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.
In a statement Tuesday, deputy state prosecutor Yariv Regev said legal officials determined "there is not enough evidence to support suspicions that would justify the opening of a criminal investigation" into two real-estate deals.
Olmert had been suspected of selling a Jerusalem home to a wealthy supporter for hundreds of thousands of dollars above market value. The other case surrounded suspicions that he bought a property in a trendy Tel Aviv neighborhood at a steep discount.
The decision does not end Olmert's legal troubles. Earlier thismonth Israel's attorney general ordered a criminal investigation into suspicions that Olmert acted improperly while he was trade minister earlier this decade.
Last week police questioned Olmert twice on suspicion he tried to rig the sale of Israel's second-largest bank in favor of two associates while he was finance minister.
Police are also looking into Olmert's role in another real-estate deal in which he is suspected of buying a Jerusalem home at a substantial discount from a developer in exchange for arranging construction permits for the builder. Olmert is a former mayor of Jerusalem.
Other developments, meanwhile, raised tensions at a time when the Israeli and Palestinian leaders are trying to move forward with preparations for a U.S.-sponsored peace conference later this year.
Israel's killing of a top Gaza militant with a missile strike on his car prompted threats of more rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli border towns.
Mubarak al-Hassanat, 37, was driving in a black jeep on Gaza's coastal road when missiles struck. The jeep veered off the road onto the beach, the vehicle's roofsheared off and the front twisted.
Al-Hassanat was the most prominent militant killed in an airstrike in more than a year.
Earlier in the day a Palestinian prisoner died of injuries suffered during a riot Monday at an Israeli desert prison. Israeli forces also killed two members of the Islamic Jihad group in a West Bank raid.
In another development, independent experts have pinpointed what they believe is the Euphrates River site in Syria that Israel bombed last month, and satellite imagery of the area shows buildings under construction roughly similar in design to a North Korean reactor capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year, the experts say.
Photographs of the site taken before the secret Sept. 6 airstrike show an isolated compound that includes a tall, boxy structure like the kind of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. The photos also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for a reactor, The Washington Post quoted David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security as saying.
U.S. and international experts and officials familiar with the sitewho looked at the photographs Tuesday said they saw a strong and credible possibility that the photos show the remote compound that was attacked. Israeli officials and the White House declined to comment.
Information for this article was contributed by Laurie Copans, Steve Weizman and Dalia Nammari of The Associated Press and by Robin Wright and Joby Warrick of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 10/24/2007