The Israeli army said its soldiers did not fire on the boy. Sporadic fighting also flared around the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah. Assassinations will spread and escalate into violence to counter violence. Israeli officials said the meshing of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah with Palestinian guerrillas represented an ominous development in what has become a sporadic but bloody struggle against Israeli forces occupying 80 percent of the West Bank and a third of the Gaza Strip after more than seven years of peacemaking efforts under the 1993 Oslo agreements. Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon last year in large part because of guerrilla attacks by Hezbollah that inflicted a stream of Jewish casualties.
Escalation is their strategic goal.
Islamic Jihad and Hamas have clear orders from Tehran to escalate. Palestinian officials called Ayyad's assassination a war crime and an example of state-sponsored terrorism. They warned that his death would inspire a fresh wave of attacks against Israeli targets. Western diplomats and local analysts warned that the killing of Ayyad could fuel a new cycle of violence that started with the election last week of former defense minister Ariel Sharon to be Israel's prime minister. Although Sharon will not take power until he can form a government, many Palestinians consider him a war criminal and insist that the proper response to his election is to intensify their armed attacks.