Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conceded defeat to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Thursday in the race for the Likud Party leadership as 3 anti-Israeli attacks on the domestic and international fronts rattle the Zionist Entity. Netanyahu , a hawkish former prime minister, congratulated Sharon in a phone call, a Netanyahu spokesman said. Sharon used his victory speech Friday to vow Israel would hunt down those behind a suicide bombing that killed three Israelis at a hotel in Kenya.

Asking supporters to forgo celebrations after his landslide win, Sharon made clear Israel would strike back hard for the bombing in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner taking off nearby.

THREE ANTI ISRAELI ATTACKS SHAKE THE ZIONIST ENTITY

Western observers said that rattled by three major anti-Israeli attacks in just eight hours Thursday, the Zionist entity faced the prospect of expanding its fight with Palestinian resistance activists to include Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

A shooting spree by Palestinian resistance men in northern Israel was grimly familiar. But a suicide bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel on Kenya's balmy Indian Ocean coast, and a concurrent missile attack that narrowly missed a chartered Israeli tourist plane departing nearby Mombasa, pointed to the possibility of an al-Qaida assault, something bin Laden has long promised.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tapped the Mossad intelligence agency to investigate the east Africa attacks, with the government speculating that al-Qaida was responsible. The group has threatened to hit Israel for years, but has not been linked to any previous attack.

In two years of Mideast fighting, Palestinian resistance activists have carried out hundreds of bombings and shootings. Across the northern border, the Lebanese group Hezbollah periodically fires missiles over the frontier.

In an audiotape recording released this month, a man believed to be bin Laden condemns Israel for "bombing houses that shelter old people, women and children with U.S.-made aircraft in Palestine.

"Our kinfolk in Palestine have been slain and severely tortured for nearly a century," he adds.

Israel's elaborate security procedures, developed in response to decades of attacks, have not eliminated the country's vulnerability either at home or abroad.

PHOTO CAPTION

(TOP) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (L) chats with Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the Likud party meeting in Tel Aviv, early November 29, 2002. REUTERS/Oleg Popov

(BOTTOM) In this photo, members of an Israeli funeral service view bodies at the scene of the attack in the northern Israeli town of Beit Shean on November 28, 2002. Photo by Reute