Israeli Dove's Wings Clipped By Party

A leading Israeli dove had his wings clipped in the primaries of the moderate Labor Party Monday.

The big loser in the Labor primaries was Yossi Beilin, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger, the architect of the Oslo Peace Accords. Analysts say the Labor Party, which brought about Oslo, is now backing away from it in a bid to win votes in elections in January.

In the wake of two years of relentless Palestinian terror, more and more Israelis see Oslo as a catastrophic mistake. It now appears that the man whom they blame for that mistake will lose his seat in parliament.

Polls show Labor, with the most seats in the Knesset, losing six of them in the next elections.

The surveys also predict Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party will trounce Labor in the election. Sharon on Monday called on Labor to join his coalition should he win the election.

Meanwhile, undercover Israeli soldiers fatally shot a Hamas activist in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday after he threw bricks at them from a roof and fled when they tried to arrest him, the army said.

Yassin al-Agha hid on the roof of a building in the Khan Younis refugee camp when troops conducted searches there for suspected militants, the army said in a statement. When soldiers tried to arrest al-Agha, he fled and soldiers shot him, the army said.

In searches carried out after al-Agha's death, soldiers found a bag with pipe bombs and an automatic weapon, the army said. The statement did not say of what al-Agha was suspected.

Later, about a dozen tanks and a bulldozer re-entered the camp and arrested three Palestinians, witnesses said. A 35-year-old man whose two brothers were among those arrested was beaten by soldiers, Palestinian police said. The injured man was taken to the hospital with two broken legs, hospital officials said.

The army had no immediate comment on the beating allegations.

The Palestinian Supreme Court Tuesday ordered the release of a man high on Israel's most wanted list.

Israel says Fuad Shobaki was behind the attempt to smuggle 50 tons of Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip. The weapons ship was seized by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea in January. The Palestinian court said there was no evidence that Shobaki was involved.

Shobaki, the finance director of the Palestinian security services, is being held under British supervision at a Palestinian jail in Jericho, the only West Bank town not under Israeli occupation.

Israel, which initially demanded that Shobaki be extradited and only reluctantly agreed to have him jailed in Jericho, said his release would violate international agreements.

However, it is doubtful the Palestinians will release him from jail: They're worried he'll be detained or assassinated by Israel.

"We respect the decision of the high court but the circumstances are difficult because of Israeli blackmail," said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat. "If we remove Shobaki from where he is right now, he may be abducted or killed by the Israelis."

Al-Agha was the third Palestinian killed in 24 hours, with Israeli troops continuously carrying out searches in West Bank and Gaza Strip towns and cities. A Palestinian woman and a mentally handicapped Palestinian were killed Monday by army fire in the West Bank.

Israel has reoccupied every major Palestinian town or city in the West Bank, except for Jericho, in what it says is an attempt to prevent suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis.

Also in the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers fired late Monday on a U.N. bus carrying Palestinian students to a technical university, said officials in the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency, or UNRWA. A 20-year-old was moderately wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said.

Tensions between UNRWA and Israel have been high since soldiers shot and killed one of the agency's British employees, Iain Hook, on Nov. 22 during a gun battle with armed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The army said its soldiers mistook a cell phone Hook was using for a weapon and that gunmen had entered the walled UN compound. UNRWA denies that gunmen had entered the compound.