- JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli
Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for the removal of
Yasser Arafat's administration after a Palestinian gunman killed five Israelis,
including a mother and her two children, in a kibbutz.
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- The hawkish ex-premier, appointed last week after the
collapse of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's broad coalition, raised the specter
of military retaliation that could complicate a new U.S. peace mission
that began hours after he spoke.
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- A gunman slipped overnight into Kibbutz Metzer, near
the dividing line between northern Israel and the West Bank, and opened
fire, killing a woman visitor and its administrator in a rare raid on an
Israeli collective farm.
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- The militant then burst into a house, shooting dead a
34-year-old mother in the doorway of her children's room and killing two
sons aged four and five as they held bedding over their heads.
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- On Monday, Avi Ohayon staggered through the toy-filled
room where his ex-wife and children died, then collapsed on a mattress
when he spotted several small objects on a bed. "God help me,"
he screamed. "They killed a child who had a pacifier."
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- The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's
Fatah group, claimed responsibility. It said it was avenging Israel's killing
of an Islamic militant leader, and vowed "more martyrdom attacks until
occupation leaves our land."
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- Arafat's Palestinian Authority expressed "strong
condemnation of the killing of civilians" at the kibbutz while saying
it was carried out while a "brutal war machine" was killing Palestinian
men, women and children in occupied territories.
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- PEACE MISSION
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- The mostly left-wing, dovish residents of Kibbutz Metzer
were long known for seeking Jewish-Arab cooperation and backing a future
peace agreement envisaging Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, where
Palestinians are fighting occupation.
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- "We will not cease to believe in co-existence,"
Doron Lieber, a kibbutz official, told mourners at Monday's funeral.
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- The attack, likely to trigger an Israeli military response,
threw a cloud over a mission launched on Monday by U.S. envoy David Satterfield
to push a new peace "roadmap."
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- The proposal, part of efforts by an international "Quartet"
made up of U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russian mediators,
has drawn reservations from Palestinian officials and Israeli cabinet ministers,
including Netanyahu.
-
- Israel, as always, said the Palestinian leadership was
to blame for the attack for failing to rein in militants waging a two-year-old
uprising against Israeli occupation.
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- Palestinian leaders say their security services cannot
do so because they have been crippled by Israeli army offensives and clampdowns
on West Bank cities and their hinterland.
-
- Netanyahu, challenging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for
leadership of their rightist Likud party before an early general election
set for January 28, reminded Israelis he had been long called for "the
expulsion of Arafat's terror regime."
-
- He told Army Radio that Israel "would find the proper
time to do so," but taking such action depended on "international
developments currently under way" -- apparently alluding to preparations
for possible U.S.-led war to disarm Iraq.
-
- Local media have speculated Israel might expel Arafat
in the heat of a U.S. campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Sharon has promised President Bush, who wants to avoid inflaming the Arab
world, not to harm or depose Arafat.
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- But he may face growing right-wing pressure to act in
the run-up to elections to be held nine months ahead of schedule.
-
- An Israeli security source said Sharon and his new defense
minister, ex-army chief Shaul Mofaz, would discuss a "measured"
military response. Mofaz, accompanying Sharon on a visit to the kibbutz,
said: "We must do our utmost to prevent these kinds of incidents and
ensure we get the murderers."
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- CHILDREN KILLED ON BOTH SIDES
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- In a stark reminder of how children on both sides have
suffered during two years of bloodshed, Palestinian hospital officials
said Mohammed Abu Naja, eight, died of his wounds from Israeli shelling
in the Gaza Strip on October 17.
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- He was the seventh Palestinian civilian death stemming
from the incident, which the Israeli army said was a response to gunmen
firing on Israeli bulldozers. Militants say their attacks on Israelis are
vengeance for Israeli raids.
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- The raid at Metzer was one of the few times militants
have struck a kibbutz during their revolt.
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- The kibbutz's security chief told reporters he shot at
the gunman but he managed to escape.
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- At least 1,654 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been
killed since the Palestinian revolt erupted in September 2000 after U.S.-brokered
talks on Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza stalled.
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