TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 31 -- Fear of a fresh - and worse - outburst of violence increased Sunday after Palestinian gunmen fired at an Israeli family traveling in the West Bank, killing the leader of a Jewish militant group, his wife, and injuring their four daughters, police said.
In another incident, a leading member of Palestine Liberation Organization's Fatah mainstream movement, was shot and killed outside his home in the West Bank town of Tul Karem. The Israeli Defense Forces spokesman did not comment on Palestinian claims that an Israeli undercover military unit had killed the man.
However, Channel 2 TV said the man was a Tanzim paramilitary activist, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak said later the army, "has been operating as we see today and in recent weeks, very effectively, in varied ways...against the direct perpetrators of attacks and also against those who send them."
Clashes erupted in Jerusalem's streets Sunday night as thousands of angry Israelis joined the funeral of Binyamin Zeev Kahane, a leader of the outlawed Kahane movement, and his wife Talia who were gunned down near the West Bank settlement of Ofra earlier in the day.
Extremists attacked Arabs whom they encountered along their route and police said it had rescued at least five Arabs. A policeman was slightly injured when hundreds of extremists tried to beat up Arab workers in a felafel (oriental food) stand. Jewish shop owners were hurt when they tried to protect their Arab employees, police reported.
Police said two Arabs were slightly injured and evacuated to a hospital.
Rioters also attacked Channel 2 TV and army radio mobile stations sent there to cover the funeral.
Kahane supporters have often demonstrated near site of terrorist attacks carrying placards saying, "Kahane was right" and shouting "Death to the Arabs."
In an evident attempt to deliver a political message the mourners carrying the two coffins veered from the funeral's prescribed route to the main Jaffa road and was then expected to pass near Prime Minister Barak's official residence.
The shooting incident occurred early Sunday. A spokesman for the Israeli police in the West Bank said that at least two people armed with Kalachnikov assault rifles fired dozens of bullets at Kahane's car from the Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud.
The driver, 33-year-old Binyamin Zeev Kahane, was instantly killed. A bullet hit the head of his wife, Talia, and she died later, in a hospital. Their car crashed injuring the couples' four daughters. One of them, a four-year-old girl, was unconscious because of a head injury, the Hadassah Hospital reported.
Binyamin Zeev Kahane, who came to Israel from the United States at the age of four, eventually led one of the two groups that succeeded the militant Kach that his father, Rabbi Meir Kahane had formed. His father was assassinated in New York in Nov. 1990.
In a rare move, the authorities barred Rabbi Kahane, and then his son, from running in the elections because their platforms were "racist". The Israeli government outlawed Kahane's movement in March 1994 after a supporter, Baruch Goldstein, entered the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down worshippers.
Kahane served time for pushing a police officer in an attempt to forcibly enter an Israeli-Arab town and was standing trial for alleged sedition and disturbing the peace in protests against the Oslo agreements with the Palestinians.
The attack immediately raised fears of a retaliation by his group for whom revenge is a motto.
One of the group's activists, Tiran Pollack, who has a rich record of run-ins with police, Sunday talked of having a heart boiling, furious, injured, bleeding.
Pollack said the revenge must account for all murders. "If we want Jewish blood not to be cheap, the Arabs must know that for every hair of a Jew that falls, the head of an Arab will fall."
Prof. Ehud Shprinzak, an expert on extreme movements, said he believed the Israeli General Security Services keeps close tabs on the Kahane people, but a former senior GSS commander, Shimon Romah said the deterioration could be "terrible."
Romah concurred that the Kahane followers' capabilities are limited, but all it needs is "one madman" to ignite the area. The country is awash with arms and ammunition and almost anyone can obtain a weapon through a third person, he said.
Romah said he feared an Israeli attack in Hebron, a religious site, or a mass attack that would prompt a Palestinian retaliation.
"The Palestinians haven't exhausted their capabilities at this time, they have arms," he noted. Police confirmed they are on alert, and Romah said he believed the General Security Service was too. He seemed concerned a person with no record would attack just as Baruh Goldstein did while wearing a uniform and a captain's ranks. Goldstein was a doctor in the settlement of Kiryat Arba.
A former head of the Jewish branch in the General Security Service, Hezi Kalo, said he was concerned also because right wing groups were anxious over concessions the government was ready to make for peace, including ceding sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the holiest Jewish site.
Some right wings extremists have been hinting that Barak was a traitor and ought to be fought, arousing memories of the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right wing extremist in an attempt to scuttle the peace process.
The Council of Settlers in the occupied territories said Sunday that Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami were, "personally responsible" for the attack.
"As long as the two court Arafat and negotiate with the murderer Dahalan (the head of the Palestinian Preventive security in Gaza), they broadcast a green light to terror and encourage the murder of Jews," the settlers said.
The settlers were paying the price of Barak's election campaign, their statement added. Foreign Minister Ben-Ami reacted sharply: "We have already been at the verge of a civil war in 1995. We thought we have learnt the lesson, that we could conduct a painful, heartrending debate without incitement of this kind. I hope they have learnt the lesson, otherwise they will bear the responsibility!"
Barak sharply condemned the attack on the Kahanes adding: "No kind of violence against Israeli citizens will break our strength or be rewarded. The murderers will not get away with it."
The Palestinian leader killed in Tul Karem was identified as Thabet Thabet, an employee of one of the Palestinian Authority ministries and chief of Fatah security in Tul Karem. Thabet was gunned down in front of his house and died later in hospital, the Palestinian reports said.
Arafat's advisor Nabil Abu Rudeineh accused Israel of carrying out a series of assassinations against Palestinians since the beginning of the confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians three months ago.
"These aggressive assassinations could lead to a catastrophic reactions and serious results and could destroy all the Arab and international efforts to revive and save the stalled peace process," Abu Rudeineh told reporters.
The killing of Thabet is the first ever of a high-ranking official member of a Palestinian movement.
The attack on the Kahane comes a day after the main Palestinian group, Fatah, called for two weeks of intensified protests to mark the 36th anniversary of the founding of the group.
The incident happened three days after a bomb attack on a Tel Aviv bus injured 14 Israelis, and two security men died trying to defuse a bomb in the Gaza Strip.
Radio reports said the Israeli security services had detained 15 Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks against Israeli targets.
Palestinian radio reported that five Palestinian workers were injured at the Erez Crossing point while going to their work at the Erez industrial zone.
However the Israel Defense Forces spokesman said the incident occurred when Palestinians tried to prevent other Palestinians from going to work for Israelis there.
The spokesman said the militants tried to keep the workers away and stoned Israeli soldiers who fired in the air. The Palestinians nevertheless approached the Israelis and when they came too close, the Israelis fired at the legs of the more active rioters, a military source said.
The Palestinian radio said Israeli tanks shot at Palestinian houses in Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza, and the Deheishe refugee camp and Askar refugee camp in the West Bank damaging dozens of houses and wounding at least 18 people. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman denied the report.
(With reporting by Saud Abu-Ramadan in Gaza)
