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Three Injured in Firebomb Attack in East Jerusalem

November 2, 1988
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An Israeli woman was severely burned and two other people were injured Tuesday in a firebomb attack on their car in the Wadi Joz district of East Jerusalem.

It was the second gasoline bomb assault on an Israeli vehicle since Sunday, when a bus was set on fire outside Jericho in the West Bank.

Rachel Weiss, a schoolteacher from Tiberias, and her three small children died as a result, and five other persons were injured.

That outrage infuriated Israelis, leading to last-minute predictions of victory for the hardline Likud and parties of the far right in Tuesday’s Knesset elections.

Premier Yitzhak Shamir, the Likud leader, said Tuesday’s incident confirmed a rising wave of terrorism against Israel.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who heads the Labor Party, said the attacks Sunday and Tuesday were attempts to intervene in the Israeli electoral process.

They were “not mere words,” he said, in a reference to Likud charges that King Hussein of Jordan interfered in the elections when he expressed preference for a Labor victory during an American television interview last month.

The car attacked Tuesday was a Likud campaign vehicle. The woman most seriously injured was taken to the intensive care unit at Shaare Zedek Hospital here. She was identified as Yocheved Ferbisch.

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