OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 28 November 2002 — Five Palestinians died as violence swept across the occupied territories yesterday, setting a tense stage for the Likud party primaries expected to help Ariel Sharon remain Israel’s prime minister.
A 33-year-old Palestinian was killed in the evening when Israeli soldiers patrolling the reoccupied town of Bethlehem opened fire on his car, Palestinian medical sources said. The incident occurred shortly after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expressed his outrage at Israel’s military operations and canceled Christmas celebrations in the southern West Bank city. "There won’t be any Christmas," he told reporters in Ramallah, describing Israel’s recent closure of Bethlehem as an "international crime".
Following last week’s Jerusalem bus bomb which left 11 people dead, the army moved back into Bethlehem and declared the town a closed military zone under an order valid until Dec. 30.
In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a local leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Arafat’s Fatah, and senior member of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, were killed in an overnight blast.
The deaths sparked Palestinian accusations that Israel had resumed its policy of assassinations, following reports by Palestinian security sources the men were killed when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile on a building they were in. But an army spokesman denied "any involvement".
In Nablus, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who was going door to door in Nablus’ Askar refugee camp, waking up fellow Muslims for "suhoor", the last meal before the start of the dawn-to-dusk fast during Ramadan. A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was also arrested by the army in the camp, the security sources said.
A Palestinian blew himself up near the northern crossing point of Erez, after both Israeli and Palestinian security tried to stop his car. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades said his attack was aimed at the Israeli side of a nearby liaison office, but the blast only set fire to an empty Palestinian security building.
The Israeli army also staged another one of its almost daily raids in the southern Gaza Strip overnight when helicopters badly damaged a school in Khan Yunis, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qorei met with his Israeli counterpart, Avraham Burg, in East Jerusalem to discuss ways of resuming peace negotiations between the two sides.
"There is no better time to clear our misunderstandings around the negotiations table rather than between funerals," he said. "If we don’t now, who knows what will happen when the genie of extremism comes out of his bottle?", he asked.
Qorei, a veteran negotiator for the Palestinian side, said "parliamentarians have a duty to work together for an end to all forms of violence." He nevertheless blamed Israel for the latest surge in violence, charging that Palestinian " bombings are a reaction to things like what happened last night".
