Mitzna stands in front of a poster of his rival for the Labor Party’s leadership Binyamin Ben-Eliezer

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, November 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israel’s center-left Labor party chooses a new leader Tuesday, November 19, to battle out January elections with the right-wing Likud of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who once again sent his tanks to raid Gaza overnight, leaving three Palestinians injured.

Labor’s primaries were expected to be won by dovish Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna, a former general who favors a swift resumption of talks with the Palestinians. But Mitzna is likely to find himself heading an opposition party after the January election, which Likud is tipped to sweep, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

A last-minute poll published in the daily Ha’aretz showed Mitzna, 57, well ahead with 53 percent of intended votes. His closest rival, hawkish former defense minister and current party chief Binyamin Ben Eliezer, is tipped to garner 35 percent.

The third candidate, moderate deputy Haim Ramon, is expected to draw just 11 percent. A candidate has to win more than 40 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.

The balloting ends at 9:00 pm (1900 GMT), with the first results expected before midnight.

Mamduh Nawfal, an advisor to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, said “Mitzna's victory will mean there is a partner for peace again and his failure will signify that there is no more hope and that the current deadlock is to go on.”

He said Arafat and other Palestinian officials were following “with interest” the Labor primary elections, opposing the dovish Mitzna and hawkish former defense minister and incumbent party leader Binyamin Ben Eliezer, as well as moderate MP Haim Ramon.

Were Ben Eliezer reelected, this would mean he could “accommodate again” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who heads the right-wing Likud party and who collaborated with Ben Eliezer for 20 months in a national unity coalition until the Labor chief walked out last month, said Nawfal.

Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Al-Khatib said for his part that the Labor primaries will place Israelis and Palestinians at “a crossroads.”

“We hope the Israelis will realize that a military solution won’t bring about peace and draw a lesson after two years of conflict,” he told AFP.

The center-left party has undergone an identity crisis since former prime minister Ehud Barak lost to Sharon in February 2001 after failing to strike a peace deal with Arafat at the July 2000 U.S.-brokered Camp David talks.

Mitzna’s program, if he becomes prime minister, includes withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, evacuating Gaza Strip settlements, withdrawing from most of the West Bank, dismantling isolated Jewish settlements in the West Bank and reaching a compromise on the prickly issue of east Jerusalem, the Arab part of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 war.

Labor, which launched the Oslo peace process, is deeply divided after almost two years of close collaboration with Sharon in his national unity coalition, where Ben Eliezer oversaw the largest invasion of the West Bank in 35 years before walking out in October.

Polls show the Likud could almost double its seats in the January 28 polls. First, it must choose between Sharon and his bombastic foreign minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said the first item on his agenda as premier would be to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Since his cabinet lurched to the right following Labor’s walkout, Sharon has been under increasing pressure to take tougher measures against the Palestinians, especially after an ambush last week in the West Bank city of Al- Khalil (Hebron) cost the lives of 12 Israeli security officers.

He is also under huge U.S. pressure not to stir up tensions ahead of an anticipated U.S. war on Iraq, while Netanyahu has said such a conflict would provide the ideal opportunity to expel Arafat, accused by Israel of deep complicity in two years of anti-Israeli attacks.

The Al-Khalil shooting drew international condemnation as a “terrorist” strike. In response, the Palestinians have argued that the denunciations were a “distortion,” given that all the men killed in the attack were armed combatants, including three settler security officers buried in military funerals this week.

As a result of the attack, Israel mulled extending the area under its direct control in Al-Khalil. Young Jewish hardliners have already set up a settlement outpost at the site of Friday’s ambush, between the established settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the edge of the city, and tiny Jewish enclaves in the city center.

France criticized the extension of the settlements, saying they went against international law.

In the meantime, Israeli forces pressed ahead with raids into the Gaza Strip, with a second incursion in two nights leaving three Palestinians wounded by tank fire.

Two of them, hit in eastern Gaza City, were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, Palestinian officials said. The third was a passerby.

Early Monday, November 18, four Palestinians were wounded when Israeli troops clashed with gunmen as they surrounded and then partially destroyed a base of the Palestinian preventive security forces in Gaza City.

Israel sent tanks and helicopter gunships against Palestinian security forces in Gaza accusing them of complicity in “terrorism”.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs also claimed responsibility for an ambush near Ramallah in the West Bank late Monday in which a Jewish settler woman, a mother of seven, was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen.

Washington also confirmed it was concerned about the presence of Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus. Israel earlier said the Washington had asked Syria to close them down in response to the Al-Khalil attack, which was claimed by the resistance group.

Syria retorted that Washington’s policy was a root cause of the violence.

“The United States is responsible for this bloodbath, since it supports the Israeli occupation and provides aid to Israel, which is violating more than 28 resolutions adopted by the U.N. Security Council,” Damascus said in an open letter to the U.S. ambassador there.

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