Posted on 12/10/2002 11:06:47 AM PST by Alouette
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli political party that championed the Oslo accords with the Palestinians dealt Israel's battered peace camp another blow Tuesday by slapping down an architect of the 1993 landmark deal.
Final results in the Labor Party's rank-and-file ballot on Monday to choose parliamentary candidates for a Jan. 28 general election showed Israel's Yossi Beilin, 54, had lost his bid to remain a lawmaker.
In the last Labor primaries four years ago, Beilin was ranked second on the center-left party's list of candidates.
But in the new vote held after more than two years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, Beilin fell to No. 39.
That would put him well out of range of winning a place in the 120-member Knesset with opinion polls showing Labor winning only 20 seats in the January election under Israel's proportional voting system.
In the latest bloodshed, Israeli forces shot dead an activist in the militant Hamas group who resisted arrest in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, an army spokesman said. The man's family said he was alive when soldiers took him away.
Angering Israel, the Palestinian High Court ordered the release of the suspected financier of an alleged attempt in January to smuggle 50 tons of Iranian weapons to the Palestinian Authority, saying there was no evidence against him.
But Palestinian sources said Fuad Shobaki, a Palestinian financial official, was unlikely to be freed from jail in the West Bank city of Jericho soon. They said it was safer for him to remain there because Israel might harm him once he was out.
Israeli spokesman Raanan Gissin said Israel would be free to "bring him to justice" if he went free. Shobaki was arrested by Palestinian authorities in January after Israeli commandos seized the Karine-A arms ship in the Red Sea.
ARAFAT CONNECTION HARMED BEILIN
olitical commentators said Labor members, who replaced their hawkish leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer with the dovish Amram Mitzna last month, believed Beilin was too closely identified with the Oslo accords which many Israelis view as dead.
"Yossi Beilin is today a minority in a party, which is seeking its way toward the center and in a country as a whole in which (Palestinian President Yasser) Arafat is not relevant," commentator Emmanuel Rosenne said on Army Radio.
"Beilin is the only one who can still say Arafat's name without foaming at the mouth, and that is the reason why even the Labor Party has vomited him out," Rosenne said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose right-wing Likud party is projected to win 40 parliamentary seats, refuses to meet Arafat or negotiate until violence ends.
As a member of parliament, Beilin has met Arafat and held talks with Palestinian officials since the start more than two years ago of the Palestinian uprising for statehood. He has called for a return to peace negotiations without preconditions.
"There was a fear that (Labour's candidate roster) would symbolize the radical left," former defense minister Ben-Eliezer, in a clear reference to Beilin, told reporters after the results were in. "Thank God it ended differently."
Ten years ago, Beilin spearheaded secret contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites) that led to interim peace deals resulting in Arafat's return to the West Bank and Gaza and interim Palestinian self-rule in parts of those territories.
The uprising erupted after talks on a final peace agreement stalled in September 2000. At least 1,710 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the revolt began.
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