No Peace For Slain Israeli

A Jewish settler killed in a Palestinian shooting attack was finally laid to rest before dawn Monday after his funeral was delayed 15 hours as relatives and his activist friends waged bitter arguments over where to bury him, with each side seizing the body during the prolonged dispute.

Israel's Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau condemned the dispute as a "desecration of the dead."

Hundreds of settlers gathered Sunday afternoon outside the West Bank town of Hebron for the funeral of Nathaniel Ozeri, 34. He was shot two days earlier by Palestinian militants at his home outside the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba. His 4-year-old daughter and two dinner guests were injured in the attack.

Hebron is divided between small enclaves of Jewish settlers and the large Palestinian population, and the funeral was tumultuous from the start. Hundreds of Israeli police were stationed in the area and surrounding roads to keep the two sides apart.

Angry settlers, vowing revenge for the shooting, attacked Palestinian houses, entering one home and throwing objects out the window. Members of the funeral procession also attacked journalists, beating some of them.

At one point, Ozeri's father said during a eulogy that his son would be buried in Jerusalem. This angered some of Ozeri's friends, who like Ozeri are hardline, ideological settlers. They claimed that Ozeri wanted to be buried near the house were he lived — an isolated illegal outpost built on land that the Palestinians claim.

The friends hit and pushed relatives to snatch the body and took it away to be buried near his home.

But police were prepared for such a development, with hundreds stationed near the home to prevent the burial there. The body was returned to family members, who then proceeded toward Jerusalem, about a 30-minute drive to the north.

On the way, Palestinian gunmen fired on the procession, but no one was hurt, witnesses said.

The procession never reached Jerusalem and turned back toward Hebron. A local rabbi was asked to rule on the dispute, and said Ozeri should be buried in a Jewish cemetery in Hebron as a compromise.

Lau, the chief rabbi, said that no one, not even the family, had the right to delay the burial for any reason.

"One should not use the body of a dead person to demonstrate," Lau said. "Enough suffering, enough pain." A person should be buried as quickly as possible, in a designated cemetery, not at an outpost near his home, Lau said. In addition, the body should not be kept overnight, he said.

At one point during the funeral, Ozeri's friends pulled back the prayer shawl to expose his bearded face, going against Jewish religious tradition in which the body is not viewed at the funeral.

Ozeri's father-in-law, Shaul Nir, called for revenge in a eulogy. Nir was a member of Kach, a violent Jewish settler underground movement. He was convicted of killing Palestinians in the 1980s, and was recently pardoned and released from jail.

Kach, which espouses the restoration of the biblical state of Israel and the expulsion of all Arabs, was founded by radical rabbi Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in a New York hotel in 1990.

Also in Hebron, the Israeli army on Monday demolished the house of Taisir Shweik, a jailed Palestinian suspected of involvement in attacks against Israelis, witnesses and the army said. Twenty-two occupants of the two-story home were left homeless by the demolition, relatives said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party holds a solid lead over the rival Labor party nearly a week before national elections, according to polls published Monday.

Sharon has repeatedly promised to seek peace and make "painful concessions" if re-elected Jan. 28. But Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna said Sharon was not sincere about reviving peace talks that collapsed after the Palestinians launched an uprising more than two years ago.

Sharon's party is forecast to win 31 to 33 seats in the 120-member parliament, compared to 19 seats for the Labor Party, according to the polls in two dailies, Maariv and Yediot Ahronot.

Corruption allegations against Sharon earlier this month hurt Likud in previous opinion polls, but the numbers have stabilized over the past week or so.