Israeli military sources said yesterday the army was planning a swift and harsh retaliation for an attack close to midnight on Sunday in which a Palestinian gunman infiltrated a kibbutz known for its strong support of Jewish-Arab co-existence, and shot dead five people, including a mother and her two children in their bedroom.
Military officials believed the cell that carried out the attack had come from the West Bank city of Tul Karm, and they said the army was about to launch a broad operation in Tul Karm and the city of Nablus. The operation, they added, had been planned even before the attack at Kibbutz Metzer.
A single gunman crawled under the fence surrounding the kibbutz, which is inside Israel and close to the border with the West Bank, and opened fire on a woman, killing her as she was leaving the kibbutz's communal dining room. He then turned his gun on Yitzhak Dori (44), the head of the kibbutz, killing him. The gunman then burst into a home and shot dead Revital Ohayon (34) and her two children - Matan (5) and Noam (4) - who were in their beds.
Just before she was shot, Revital telephoned her ex-husband, Avi Ohayon, to tell him she had heard shots on the kibbutz. Moments later, her ex-husband recounted, the phone went dead.
Security forces, fearing the gunman was still on the kibbutz grounds, barred ambulances from entering for over an hour. Soldiers enforced a total blackout and residents were confined to their homes for most of the night.
Standing grief-stricken in the bedroom of his slain children, Mr Ohayon yesterday related how his only son would fall asleep with two soothers - one in his mouth and one in his hand. "How can a man - if you can call him a man - shoot a boy with two pacifiers and kill him?" he sobbed.
Kibbutz Metzer is made up largely of Argentinian immigrants and their descendants, most of whom are left wing and support Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian state there, only metres from their homes. Yesterday, a group of elders from nearby Israeli-Arab villages visited the kibbutz to offer their condolences.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia associated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the shooting, saying that turning Palestinians and Israelis "into targets of terror attacks is disgraceful." Mr Arafat said the attack was an attempt to sabotage talks under way in Cairo between Fatah and Hamas officials which are aimed at convincing the militant Islamic group to suspend suicide attacks inside Israel.
Israel's new foreign minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for the expulsion of Mr Arafat from the occupied territories in the past, rekindled that option yesterday, when he said he had long championed "the expulsion of Arafat's terror regime".
The US, however, has secured a promise from Mr Sharon not to take any drastic action against Mr Arafat. The Prime Minister, who visited the scene of the attack yesterday, including the bedroom of the slain boys, will be cautious about undermining US efforts ahead of a possible military campaign against Iraq.
In the Gaza Strip meanwhile, Palestinians reported that a two-year-old boy was killed by Israeli army fire in the southern town of Rafah.