Israel kills Gaza militant after suicide attack

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed a senior Gaza militant in an
air strike on Wednesday and wounded 10 other people, after it
vowed to avenge a suicide bombing in central Israel.

The violence put a new strain on a shaky
Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire and distanced further the chances
of resuming peace efforts that were already largely on hold as
Israel readies for a national election in March.

Leaders of the Popular Resistance Committees, whose senior
field commander, Mahmud el-Arqan, 29, died when two missiles
fired from an Israeli aircraft struck his car in the Gaza town
of Rafah, said they would avenge his slaying.

“Our reaction will be painful,” Abu Abir, a spokesman for
the militants, said.

Medics said 10 other people were wounded, among them three
children younger than 10, struck by shrapnel from the vehicle
in a residential area as it rounded a bend on a road crowded
with pedestrians.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli army gunners later fired
at rocket launch sites in northern Gaza, causing no casualties.

Islamic Jihad, a separate militant organization from
el-Arqan’s group, had claimed responsibility for Monday’s
bombing of a shopping mall that killed five in the Israeli town
of Netanya.

Israeli military sources said el-Arqan was targeted for
having collaborated with Islamic Jihad in a series of recent
attacks on Israeli troops and in weapons smuggling into Gaza.

In the West Bank, the Israeli army said it arrested two
Islamic Jihad suspects after witnesses said troops had besieged
a house near the town of Jenin.

Israel’s security cabinet gave the army a green light to
resume raids and targeted strikes against militant leaders
after Monday’s bombing, which Islamic Jihad said was in
response to Israeli attacks on its members.

SHARON FACES DOWN RIGHTISTS

Facing a re-election bid in a March 28 poll, Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon must face down rightist political foes
who have accused him of being soft on the Palestinians since
Israel’s withdrawal in September from the Gaza Strip.

Sharon also wants to urge Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas to crack down and disarm militants. Abbas has condemned
the bombing and Palestinian police have arrested suspects.

Islamic Jihad said about a dozen members in the West Bank
were in the custody of Palestinian police. The group said it
would adhere to a truce reached last March to avoid attacks on
Israel, if Israel also refrained from violence.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Abbas, criticised
Israel’s “assassination” of the militant as “dangerous …
harmful to the peace process and harmful to the Arab and
International efforts exerted to maintain calm.”

He said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had
telephoned Abbas asking him “to seek to maintain calm and
self-restraint and to maintain the peace process.”

More violence could be risky for both Abbas, struggling to
gain control of lawlessness in Gaza and the occupied West Bank,
and Sharon, who needs Israeli voters to see the Gaza pullout as
having been a well-calculated move to ease violence.

For now, opinion polls put Sharon’s new Kadima party well
out in front of his leading rivals, the left-of-centre Labour
party and the Likud which Sharon quit after its “rebels”
opposed to the Gaza pullout threatened to stymie future peace
moves.

Sharon won surprise support from a leading rightist when
Cabinet Minister Tzahi Hanegbi defected on Wednesday from Likud
saying Israel “needs the continued leadership of Ariel Sharon.”

Hanegbi could help Sharon appease rightists who may have
been alienated by his recruitment of former Labour chief and
Nobel peace prize laureate Shimon Peres.