By
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that he is close to deciding whether to challenge Ehud Barak for the premiership, saying the first priority must be to restore security after two months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Netanyahu currently holds a double-digit lead in opinion polls over Barak. The current Palestinian uprising has left many Israelis disillusioned with the prime minister and his handling of the peace process and Barak has been forced to call early elections.
Mobbed by journalists at Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv upon returning from a lengthy trip to the United States, Netanyahu refused to give a clear answer when asked whether he would run for prime minister.
He said he "would consult first of all with my family, and my associates and myself" and would make a decision soon - "not in weeks or in months."
Because of the violence, Netanyahu said "the nation is gripped by fear." The most important goal now, he said, is to "return a feeling of security to every citizen."
During his 1996-1999 tenure, Netanyahu struck a tough security stance and was perceived by Palestinians and the United States as stalling peace negotiations. Barak handily defeated him in elections and took office 18 months ago.
Meanwhile, the political turmoil and the ongoing violence appeared to feed off one another yesterday as the region endured another tense day. Nearly 300 people have been killed since late September.
Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen waged fierce shootouts near a Jewish shrine in Bethlehem, a West Bank town controlled by the Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, an explosion killed an Islamic militant who was apparently preparing to plant a bomb.
The Israeli army said Palestinian gunmen attacked the shrine, revered by Jews as Rachel's Tomb, the burial site of the biblical matriarch, from three sides and apparently tried to take it over. Palestinians said the fighting broke out after soldiers and Jewish settlers attacked Muslim worshippers.
The confrontation lasted hours. At one point, Israeli helicopters aiming at Palestinian gunmen fired two rockets at the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem in the West Bank, the army said.
Fourteen Palestinians were injured in fighting in the Bethlehem area on Sunday and early yesterday, Palestinian hospitals said.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, returning from a visit to Qatar, said the Israeli shelling "was a shock because we had agreed to cool down the situation."
Dressed in his trademark military fatigues and checkered headdress, the Palestinian leader carried a holstered German-made machine pistol in his left hand as he reviewed an honor guard outside his Gaza City office.
A visibly upset Arafat said he was carrying the weapon because Jewish settlers blocked Gaza's main north-south thoroughfare, the road he had to travel to reach Gaza City.
Israel army radio said settlers tried to throw stones at Arafat's convoy as it passed through the Gaza Strip. The army said only that it removed settlers from the roadside. Police detained some of them.
During decades in exile, Arafat regularly wore a pistol, and sparked a major controversy when he wore it during a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 1974. But until yesterday, he had not been seen with a gun in public since he returned to the Palestinian areas in 1994.
Arafat, who is constantly surrounded by a large contingent of bodyguards, appeared to be carrying the weapon merely as a symbolic gesture.
"It's upsetting that they open the road to allow Arafat to pass," said Ronit Haratz, one of the demonstrators. "Every time there is an attack, they close the road for a while, and they reopen it and there is another attack."
Israeli troops closed Gaza's main north-south road to Palestinian traffic two weeks ago following a roadside bombing that killed two Israeli adults and wounded several children riding on a school bus. Reopening the road yesterday, the army cited relative calm in the area.
The military also lifted a blockade around the Palestinian town of Qalqilya in the West Bank. Since shortly after the rioting started Sept. 28, Palestinian cities and towns have been encircled by Israeli troops, preventing people from traveling.
Meanwhile, Awad Silmi, 28, a member of the radical Islamic movement Hamas, apparently blew himself up with a bomb and was found dead by Palestinian security forces in Gaza near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, Hamas said.
Silmi was suspected of killing an Israeli soldier in Gaza, and had been jailed by the Palestinian Authority for four years before being released recently, said Hamas spokesman Ismail Abu Shanab.
