Militants in Gaza Fatally Shoot Rabbi

With his wife and six children looking on, the rabbi of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip was fatally shot in an ambush by Palestinian gunmen on Friday, hours after the Israeli army had engaged Palestinian militants in a deadly clash nearby.

The fate of the Gaza settlements -- where about 6,000 Jews live among more than 1 million Palestinians -- has been the subject of debate during the campaign leading up to Israel’s Jan. 28 elections. Amram Mitzna, the opposition Labor Party’s candidate for prime minister, says he would pull Israeli troops and Jewish settlers out of Gaza, whether or not the Palestinians made any concessions.

His party’s platform, details of which emerged Friday, also calls for handing over parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians -- a stance similar to that taken by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak during U.S.-brokered peace talks at Camp David during the last months of the Clinton administration.

Those talks collapsed in acrimony, and the Palestinian uprising began two months later.

The left-leaning Labor Party is still running far behind Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s conservative Likud Party in public-opinion polls, but a vote-buying scandal has eaten into Likud’s support.

In Washington on Friday, U.S. officials met with representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and Russia on a long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East. White House officials said the plan was not yet ready, an assertion that other members of the so-called Quartet group disputed.

Associates said the 40-year-old rabbi, Yitzhak Aramai, was critically wounded by gunmen who fired a volley of shots at a car carrying him and his family near the entrance to the Gush Katif settlement bloc. He died a short time later.

In accordance with Jewish tradition, he was buried within hours, in the town of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. Aramai, the rabbi of the Netzer Hazani settlement, was a well-known figure among Gaza settlers, and his death prompted cries for vengeance.

Israeli troops staged a manhunt, but failed to find the assailants. The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Angry settlers demanded that the army demolish Palestinian homes along the route where the shooting took place. Palestinians said two houses were bulldozed later Friday.

Before dawn, shortly before the rabbi was shot and killed, the Israeli army staged a major raid in the nearby Palestinian town of Deir al Balah, seizing 10 Palestinian militants and demolishing several homes.

During the demolition, which was carried out by troops backed by tanks, shooting broke out, and a Palestinian was killed, the two sides said. Palestinians identified him as a security guard.

The arrested men were from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah faction of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, the Israeli army said.

Palestinian officials, meanwhile, made their strongest call yet for the postponement of Palestinian elections, which have been set for Jan. 20. The Palestinian central election committee recommended that Arafat delay the balloting because a vote could not be carried out while most of the West Bank’s cities and towns remain under Israeli occupation.

Arafat, who has been confined for months to his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, has been hinting that it would be impossible to hold free and fair balloting unless the Israelis pulled back.

Israel staged a sweeping offensive in the West Bank in April, and has maintained an intermittent presence in most major Palestinian population centers since then. The drive was triggered by a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel that caused hundreds of casualties.

Authorities said that what could have been a grisly attack was averted Friday when a passerby spotted a gift-wrapped package that was abandoned near a shopping center in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. The parcel contained a powerful bomb with nails and shrapnel that was set to be activated by cell phone, authorities said. It was detonated by remote control, and no one was hurt.

As the Quartet meeting got underway in Washington, President Bush said, “I believe it is in everybody’s best interests that there be two states living side by side in peace. And this government will work hard to achieve that.”

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to discuss the timing of the peace plan, which is known as the “road map,” or whether it was being delayed at Israel’s request because of the impending national election.

“The president would very much like to make progress on the road map,” Fleischer said. “He thinks it’s important to move forward. He’d like to move forward at the first possible date that the parties will be willing to give an effective consideration to the road map.”

Other Quartet officials said the plan was ready but that they had agreed to delay implementation for the time being. “We have finalized the text,” said Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller of Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

*

Staff writer Maura Reynolds in Washington contributed to this report.