Israeli Party Leader Vote Goes on Despite Attacks on the Domestic and International Fronts

28/11/2002| IslamWeb

UPDATED||HIGHLIGHTESPalestinian Resistance Kills 6 Israelis & Wound 34 Others in a Shooting Rampage at a Likud Polling Station in the Northern Israeli Town of Beit Shean|| Occupation Troops Kill a 3-Year Old Palestinian Boy in Hebron, Al-Khalil|| Sharon Accuses Palestinians, Arab States & International Terrorism of Trying to Influence His Party Elections by Terror|| Aqsa Brigades Claims Responsibility for Shooting Spree at Likud Polling Station||STORY: Palestinian resistance men killed six Israelis and wounded 34 in Israel Thursday hours after missile and bomb strikes on Israelis in Kenya, overshadowing a vote that could decide Israel's next leader.

Occupation army sources said two resistance men went on a shooting rampage at a crowded Likud polling station in the northern Israeli town of Beit Shean, a bastion of Likud voters near borders with the West Bank and Jordan.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, a three-year-old Palestinian boy died of shrapnel wounds. The boy's father said Israeli occupation soldiers shot him while he was standing in a window.

Israeli occupation army sources said an explosive device thrown at occupation soldiers patrolling the area hit the wall of the boy's home and caused his wounds.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, facing a party leadership challenge Thursday before a January 28 general election, accused the Palestinian Authority, Arab states and "terror organizations" of using violence to influence Israeli elections.

Sharon is widely tipped to win the right-wing Likud party's leadership ballot against his Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed tougher action against a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for an independent state.

A surge in Palestinian gun and resistance attacks in the uprising had already thrust security to the top of the agenda in the contest before Thursday's violence.

Sharon has had to juggle conflicting pressures to both look tough before the January 28 general election and avoid an intensification of the conflict with Palestinians that could harm U.S. efforts to win Arab support for possible war on Iraq.

Addressing a nationally televised news conference, the prime minister claimed that Israel had evidence "the Palestinians and the terror organizations and the Palestinian Authority and also Arab states want to influence the democratic process, the elections and that terror is one of their tools." He gave no details.

Sharon urged Likud members to vote as normal Thursday despite the latest attacks.

SHOOTING RAMPAGE

In the latest violence, Israeli medics said six Israelis were killed and 34 were wounded before the gunmen were shot dead.

"The situation here is that they infiltrated and fired indiscriminately hundreds of bullets and hit many people," said Beit Shean Mayor Pini Kabalo.

The attack caused panic among voters and activists at the polling station. "There were rounds and rounds of fire. We have friends and neighbors who were killed," one witness said.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafats Fatah movement, said it carried out the attack to avenge the deaths of two resistance commanders in the West Bank Tuesday that they blamed on Israel.

The attack in Beit Shean occurred several hours after a car bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel near the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa killed 15 people. Three of the dead were Israelis, Israel's Foreign Ministry said.