ISRAEL: A Palestinian gunman from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO shot dead six Israelis and injured 30 more at a birthday party in a hall in central Israel late last night.The attacker, a member of Fatah's so-called "Al-Aqsa Brigades," was apparently forced out of the hall by guests who threw chairs and bottles at him, and was shot dead by a local policeman.
The attack in Haderah was the first on civilians inside Israel since two suicide bombings in early December. The Al-Aqsa Brigades said the shootings were to avenge the killing on Monday, apparently by Israel, of one of its leaders, Mr Raed Karmi, himself a self-confessed killer of two Israelis. News of the attack prompted celebrations in Mr Karmi's home town of Tulkarm in the West Bank, where the name of the gunman, Abed Hasson, was announced over loudspeakers.
Aides to Mr Arafat said he was deeply dismayed by the attack. Mr Uzi Landau, the Israeli Minister for Internal Security, retorted that Mr Arafat was "a terrorist and a liar", and said he hoped the government would soon take "the appropriate action" against him.
Mr Landau dismissed suggestions that Israel had precipitated this latest cycle of bloodshed by killing Karmi, declaring that while Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority would "always try to find a pretext", the fact was that Palestinian gunmen "kill us whenever they can". Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, leader of the Labour Party, told party members that only Labour's moderating voice in the Likud-led government was preventing an all-out war on the PA.
The Palestinian leader , is being pressed ever harder by the US to move convincingly against extremist groups, while some of those groups are threatening violence against his PA colleagues.
An American Congressional delegation, headed by the House Minority Leader, Mr Richard Gephardt, yesterday announced it had completed a visit to the region without meeting Mr Arafat because, in the words of Congressman Ray LaHood, it had preferred "to see some of the other people who are emerging in the region that maybe will have the potential to bring about peace".
The Arafat boycott appears to have stemmed in part from the fact that the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell has said he is convinced that the PA - although not Mr Arafat - was behind the 50-ton arms shipment seized by Israel in the Red Sea two weeks ago.
In an Israeli TV interview on Wednesday night, Mr Arafat insisted he was doing everything to thwart extremist attacks.
Israel yesterday shot dead a gunman from Mr Arafat's Fatah faction, Khamis Abdullah, in an exchange of fire near Nablus.
Mr Arafat, who was visited yesterday by the Spanish Foreign Minister, Mr Josep Pique of Spain, the current EU President, said in his TV interview he had "no doubt" he could make peace even with the Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon. In an interview with France's Figaro newspaper published yesterday he asserted that Israel was pursuing a "systematic" plan to "kill all the leaders of the Palestinian people, one after the other".