Mid-East Realities

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FAR RIGHT-WING ISRAELI MINISTER ASSASSINATED THIS MORNING

October 17, 2001

MID-EAST REALITIES © - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 10/17: For some time now Palestinians have been warning that because of Israel's assassination of Palestinian leaders, "crossing the red line" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they would respond. When one of the founders of the PLO was assassinated by helicopter missile shot directly into his body as he sat working in his high-rise office in Ramallah in late August, many have expected that some counter-assassination attempt would be made by Palestinians. Today is just happened:

REHAVAM ZE'EVI SHOT DEAD IN ASSASSINATION IN JERUSALEM

[Ha'aretz - Wednesday, October 17, 2001] Gunmen mortally wounded Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi at around 7 A.M. Wednesday near his room in Jerusalem's Hyatt Hotel, and Ze'evi died of his wounds three hours later in Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital.

The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack, citing Israel's targeted killing of the organization's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, in his Ramallah office on August 27.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened senior security and cabinet officials at 10 A.M. (0800 GMT) to discuss the shooting and Israel's response.

Senior physicians at Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital said that Ze'evi, 75, had been shot twice in the head. They declared him dead at 10 A.M.

"Minister Ze'evi arrived at the hospital dead, with no pulse and no respiration," said Professor Avi Rifkin, a senior trauma physician. "As a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate him, we opened his chest and carried out direct heart massage. The heart resumed beating. We then began all sorts of procedures, but ... all of our efforts failed."

Ze'evi, leader of the far-right National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu bloc, announced Monday that he and party colleague Avigdor Lieberman were resigning from the government in protest over cabinet decisions they viewed as too soft on Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The resignations were to have taken effect at 1.30 P.M. on Wednesday.

Ze'evi, a former army major general, was the acknowledged arch-hawk of Israeli politics, having entered the Knesset 13 years ago at the head of a controversial campaign to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by carrying out a mass "transfer" of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu party members Wednesday pressed Lieberman to withdraw his resignation in the wake of the shooting.

Jerusalem Police Chief Mickey Levy said Ze'evi, who supported the idea of transfer, was unguarded at the time of the attack. The Shin Bet security service's VIP Bodyguard unit ordered cabinet ministers and Knesset members to remain in their homes or in other "secure areas" in the wake of the shooting, but Army Radio reported that not all heeded the call.

Ze'evi's wife said Wednesday that she found him "Lying, without a pulse" on the floor of the hotel hallway in front of their room.

The gunmen, whose identity was not known, apparently escaped. The hotel is located adjacent to East Jerusalem and to Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank. It is also only several hundred meters from the national police headquarters.
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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/10/469.htm