Palestinian gunmen assassinated far-right Israeli Cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi yesterday in revenge for the killing of their militant leader, throwing US-led peace efforts into turmoil.
The radical Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility for shooting Zeevi, a 75-year-old former general who advocated the "transfer" of Arabs from land claimed by Jews.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was solely to blame. An Arafat aide denied this and the Palestinian Authority condemned the first Arab assassination of a member of Israel's government.
"The responsibility is Arafat's alone, as someone who has carried out and is carrying out acts of terrorism and never took steps against it," Sharon told a memorial session of parliament after Tourism Minister Zeevi was shot at a Jerusalem hotel.
"We will carry out a war to the bitter end against the terrorists, those who help them and those who dispatch them," Sharon said, accusing Arafat's Palestinian Authority of harboring "murderers."
A Palestinian official said Arafat had issued orders to find the "group that carried out the assassination and arrest them."
The PFLP, which opposes the Palestinian Authority and rejects Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords, said it shot Zeevi in retaliation for Israel's assassination of its leader in August in a missile strike.
"The Israeli government, by killing Abu Ali Mustafa, has opened the gates of hell on itself and now the fire is approaching it," PFLP spokesman Ali Jaradat said.
Israel and the Palestinians have pledged to try to end more than a year of violence under a ceasefire plan which they reaffirmed on Sept. 26, almost exactly a year after the Palestinians began their uprising against Israeli occupation.
But the assassination raised the specter of Israeli retaliation at a time when Washington, trying to bolster Arab and Muslim support for its anti-terror war after the Sept. 11 attacks, is pressuring Israel and the Palestinians to back away from confrontation.
Sharon said "everything had changed" as a result of Zeevi's death. A political source said the easing in recent days of Israel's blockades of Palestinian areas would be rescinded.
Zeevi, popularly known by his nickname "Gandhi," was shot twice outside his room at the Hyatt hotel.
As the news broke, dozens of Palestinians in the Ain El-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon rushed into the street carrying pictures of Mustafa and dancing.
But Arafat's government, the Palestinian Authority, swiftly condemned the attack. "We reject all forms of political assassinations," Cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said, calling for an end to a "vicious cycle of killings."
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