JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Suspected leftist Palestinian Resistance me
assassinated far-right Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi on Wednesday, dealing a serious blow to U.S.-led peace efforts. (Read map caption below) The radical Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine group claimed responsibility for the first Arab assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.
The PFLP said it carried out the attack on Zeevi, a 75-year-old former general, in retaliation for the assassination of its leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, by Israeli forces in August.
``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 in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
As news broke of the shooting broke, dozens of Palestinians in the Ain El-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon rushed into the street carrying pictures of Mustafa and dancing.
Zeevi, who tendered his resignation as tourism minister from Sharon's cabinet on Monday after it eased a blockade in Palestinian areas, was hit by two bullets at the door to his room in the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem.
Police said Zeevi did not have a bodyguard from the Shin Bet internal security service in line with official policy to assign personal protection only to cabinet members deemed to be at risk.
``The minister Zeevi arrived at the hospital dead, with no pulse and not breathing... we resuscitated him... and the heart began beating again... but all the efforts afterwards failed,''
Avi Rivkin, of Hadassah hospital, told reporters.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said the shooting showed that the Palestinian Authority ``had done nothing at all to stop terrorism or to arrest terrorists.''
The assassination raised the specter of Israeli retaliation at a time when the United States is trying to calm Israeli-Palestinian violence as it wages a war against terrorism after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
MAP CAPTION:
According to press reports in Jerusalem Mr Zeevi had no bodyguards with him at the time and the gunmen were able to escape. When his wife followed him up to their room ten minutes later she found him lying in a critical condition in front of the door, police said.