Israel's centre-left Labour party chooses a new leader to battle out January elections with the right-wing Likud of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who once again sent his tanks to raid Gaza overnight, leaving three Palestinians injured.The Labour primaries were expected to be won by dovish Haifa mayor Amram Mitzna, a former general who favours a swift resumption of talks with the Palestinians but who is likely to find himself heading an opposition party after January elections, which the Likud is tipped to sweep.

A last-minute poll published in the daily Haaretz showed Mitzna, 57, well ahead with 53 percent of intended votes, outstripping his closest rival, hawkish former defence minister and current party chief Binyamin Ben Eliezer, who is tipped to garner 35 percent of the vote.

The third candidate, moderate deputy Haim Ramon, is expected to draw just 11 percent. A candidate has to win more than 40 percent of the vote to avoid a second-round runoff.

The ballots close at 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), with the first results expected before midnight.

Labour, the launcher of the Oslo peace process, is deeply divided after almost two years of close collaboration with Sharon in his national unity coalition, where Ben Eliezer oversaw the largest invasion of the West Bank in 35 years before walking out in October.

Polls show the Likud could almost double its seats in the January 28 polls, although it too must choose between Sharon and his bombastic Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said the first item on his agenda if elected will be to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Since his cabinet lurched to the right following Labour's walkout, Sharon has been under increasing pressure to take tougher measures against the Palestinians, especially after an ambush last week in the West Bank city of Hebron cost the lives of 12 Israeli security officers.

However, he is also under huge US pressure not to stir up tensions ahead of an anticipated US war on Iraq, although Netanyahu has said such a conflict would provide the ideal opportunity to expel Arafat, accused by Israel of deep complicity in two years of anti-Israeli attacks.

The Hebron shooting drew international condemnation as a "terrorist" strike, although the Palestinians have argued that the denunciations were a "distortion," given that all the men killed in the attack were armed combatants, including three settler security officers buried in military funerals this week.

"Israeli authorities spoke of a 'massacre' and 'aggression against civilian worshippers' and so on. The fact in this regard is that all of those killed or wounded were Israeli military or security personnel," a statement from the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations said.

In the meantime, Israeli occupation forces pressed ahead with raids into the Gaza Strip, with a second incursion in two nights which left three Palestinians injured.

Two of the three people wounded by tank fire in eastern Gaza City were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, while the third was a passerby, Palestinian officials said.

Early Monday, four Palestinians were wounded when Israeli occupation troops clashed with resistance men as they surrounded and then partially destroyed a base of the Palestinian preventive security forces in Gaza City.

Israel sent tanks and helicopter gunships against Palestinian security forces in Gaza accusing them of complicity in "terrorism".

The latest violence came as Israel mulled extending the area under its direct control in Hebron, where young Jewish hardliners have already set up a settlement outpost on the site of Friday's ambush, between the established settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the edge of the city, and tiny Jewish enclaves in the city centre.

Washington also confirmed it was concerned about the presence of Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus, after Israel said the United States had asked Syria to close down the group's offices there in response to the Hebron attack which was claimed by the hardline group.

PHOTO CAPTION

A supporter of Israeli Labour party leader Binyamin Ben Eliezer