Five Palestinians died as intifadha confrontations swept across the occupied territories, setting a tense stage for the Likud party primaries expected to help Ariel Sharon remain Israel's prime minister. A 33-year-old Palestinian was killed Wednesday evening when Israeli occupation soldiers patrolling the reoccupied town of Bethlehem opened fire on his car after he allegedly failed to obey an order to slow down.

The incident occurred shortly after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expressed his outrage at Israel's military operations and announced Christmas celebrations in the holy southern West Bank city were cancelled.

"There won't be any Christmas," he told reporters in Ramallah, describing Israel's recent closure of Bethlehem as an "international crime".

Following last week's Jerusalem bus bomb which left 11 people dead, the occupation army moved back into Bethlehem and declared the town a closed military zone under an order valid until December 30.

In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a local leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and senior member of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, were killed in an overnight blast.

The deaths sparked furious Palestinian accusations that Israel had resumed its policy of assassinations, following reports by Palestinian security sources the resistance leaders were killed when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile on a building they were in.

In Nablus, Israeli occupation troops shot dead a Palestinian who was going door to door in Nablus' Askar refugee camp, waking up fellow Muslims for their last meal before the start of the dawn-to-dusk fast during the holy month of Ramadan, Palestinian medical sources said.

A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was also arrested by the occupation army in the camp.

The group's armed wing claimed responsibility for a failed resistance attack on a military post in the northern Gaza Strip Wednesday morning.

A would-be bomber blew himself up near the northern crossing point of Erez, after both Israeli and Palestinian security tried to stop his car.

The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades said the attack was aimed at the Israeli side of a nearby liaison office, but the blast only set fire to an empty Palestinian security building.

The Israeli occupation army also staged another one of its almost daily raids in the southern Gaza Strip overnight when helicopters badly damaged a school in Khan Yunis, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.

Witnesses said the raid came shortly after Palestinian resistance activists were seen firing mortars towards the nearby internationally illegal Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim. There were no initial reports of injuries.

Meanwhile, Sharon, the man who started the cycle of bloodshed 26 months ago, was storming ahead in opinion polls, a day before the right-wing Likud votes to decide whether the prime minister or his Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lead the party in January general election.

Three new opinion polls in the Israeli press Wednesday predicted Sharon would crush his even more hawkish rival by at least 20 percentage points.

If Likud re-elects Sharon, he will be a hot favourite to retain his position as premier by beating the Labour party's dovish new leader, Amram Mitzna, in the January 28 legislative elections.

As evening clashes left a Palestinians injured in Jenin and another near Bethlehem, Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo accused Sharon of trying to undermine Palestinian efforts to curb the violence in the region.

The latest violence "reflects Sharon's intention to continue his policy of crimes against the Palestinian people and is an attempt to sabotage serious efforts underway to reach a united Palestinian stance on an end to the violence and for a return to the negotiations table," he told AFP.

Abed Rabbo charged that Sharon was getting tough to secure a win in Thursday's Likud party primaries.

Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei, nevertheless, met with his former Israeli counterpart, the dovish Avraham Burg, in east Jerusalem Wednesday, with both men vowing to continue their efforts to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.

Burg told reporters beforehand that there was "no better time to clear our misunderstandings around the negotiations table rather than between funerals."

However, Sharon recently demanded that the quartet of diplomatic players in the Middle East -- the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia -- make no definitive decision on the proposed "roadmap" for peace in the region.

PHOTO CAPTION

An undated handout photo shows Palestinian militant commander Imad Nasharti of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, military arm of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, who was assassinated in the West Bank town of Jenin. Nashrti and Ala'a Sabbagh of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were assassinated in Jenin refugee camp November 26, in what witnesses said was an Israeli missile strike.. REUTERS/HO
- Nov 27 9:02 AM ET