West Bank offensive widens, Hamas faces first poll test

About 2,000 people joined a funeral march in Jenin for the three. Gunmen in the crowd vowed to avenge the deaths.

The rocket fire abated on Tuesday in response to pleas from the Palestinian public for calm in Gaza. But Israel pushed ahead with military action despite US appeals for restraint, Palestinian moves to enforce a ban on public display of weapons and Palestinian insistence that militants were once again abiding by a truce.

“We condemn such actions and demand the Israelis stop these acts especially given the fact that all the factions here have recommitted to calm and to ending displays of weaponry in the streets,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said.

After the pre-dawn violence, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank voted in the final phase of municipal elections seen as a test of strength for the Islamist Hamas movement before a parliamentary election in January.

In the municipal elections, more than 144,000 Palestinian eligible voters were casting ballots to fill 1,018 seats from 2,478 candidates in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. Abbas’s Fatah movement faced a tough challenge from Hamas, a grassroots faction whose anti-poverty charities, attacks on Israelis and its reputation as being corruption free have won over many Palestinians in five years of revolt.

Polls give Hamas about 30 per cent support, pointing to big gains when it takes part in the January parliamentary elections. Hamas boycotted the only previous legislative vote in 1996 in protest at peace accords with Israel. —Reuters