Albawaba.com
Amman
Secretary of PLO mainstream movement, Fateh, Marwan Bargouthi said Thursday that the assassination of the Fateh activist Hussein Ebayyat in Beit Sahour is a serious escalation in the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians and “a cowardly crime,” that will be answered by further escalation of the Intifada.
“This will definitely open door for a reaction by Fateh,” said the Fateh official.
Barghouthi told Albawaba.com in a telephone interview that Ebayyat, 37 and a father of three, was a leading Fateh activist, and an elected member of the party's leadership in Bethlehem.
Bargouthi, a key player in the Aqsa Intifada and a hated figure for the Israelis, said that such acts on the part of Israel are intended to abort the uprising, but they can do nothing except to fuel the Palestinian rage against the Israeli occupation.
The leader added that attacks of such a nature on the Palestinians, when the Israeli forces fire helicopter rockets at Palestinians in “A” areas, which are under the full control of the Palestinian Authority, are enough justifications for the demand on the part of the PNA for international protection, which is on top of the agenda of President Yasser Arafat’s meeting with US President Bill Clinton in Washington, and his Friday meeting with the Security council.
The Israeli attack also killed two women bystanders. Aziza Danun Jubran, 52, and Rahma Rashid Shahim, 50, who were standing on the road when the vehicle was destroyed , hospital officials told AFP.
Deadly violence also raged on in the Gaza Strip as Arafat arrived in the United States.
Distraught and screaming locals rushed from their homes to pull Ebayyat from the burning and mangled vehicle, but he lay in the driver's seat, already dead with his skull cracked and leaking blood, said AFP.
At least 15 other people were injured, several seriously. Another of the wounded writhed along the side of the road, internal organs hanging out of his side.
The explosion blew out windows in the crowded Arab town and on the ground lay a football-sized fragment of the weapon which read: "US missile-surface, AGM-114."
An Israeli general told AFP that the Fateh leaders were targeted because they were wanted by Israel for their role in deadly anti-Israeli attacks, an Israeli general told AFP.
"The Fateh leaders attacked were wanted by the army for their involvement in shootings against Gilo (a Jewish settlement in Jerusalem) which wounded a border guard three weeks ago, and an attack in the village of al-Khader which killed two Israeli soldiers," said General Yaacov Zygdon, head of operations in the army's central command which covers the West Bank.
Israel accuses Fateh armed members of stoking the unrest that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 200 people, most of them Palestinians.
"This operation was organized at a high level in the Israeli armed forces," said Kamel Hamed, 40, Fateh secretary general for the Bethlehem area.
"They had watched the car that had four people from the leadership of Fateh in Bethlehem and Israel wanted to assassinate them," Hamed told AFP.
Violence also flared in the Gaza Strip, where Mohammed Kamel Sharab, 14, was killed when Israeli soldiers opened fire to disperse stone-throwing demonstrators, witnesses said.
Some 25 Palestinians were also shot and wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers ahead of the funerals of four people killed the day before, hospital sources said.
The clashes occurred at Karni crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel, where eight Palestinians were killed in fierce fire fights Wednesday when the Israelis used tanks to shell and machine-gun protestors and Palestinian gunmen.
Those injured Thursday were shot with live rounds, hospital sources said.
In Gaza City, Palestinians calling for vengeance against Israel turned out in their angry thousands to bury the two teenagers killed in Karni on Wednesday, and a third who died of wounds he received in a clash at the flashpoint earlier in the week, added the agency.
In the southern city of Khan Yunis, around 4,000 people led by masked gunmen turned out to bury a teenager killed there on Wednesday in clashes with Israeli soldiers. Fifteen Palestinians were wounded in clashes there Thursday, plus Laurent Rebours, 44, a photographer for the Associated Press, who was shot in the leg, according to AFP.
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