This time around, she is considering voting for Shinui, which is making the same promise.. Israel’s Labour Party, the architect of the peace process with the Palestinians, is heading for the worst defeat in its history in elections next week, according to polls published yesterday. If they are right – there are thousands of undecided voters – then Labour is staring into the abyss. Mr Mitzna promised to return to negotiations with Yasser Arafat and withdraw troops from part of the Occupied Territories.”Desperation in Labour Party: we might turn into only the third largest party in parliament” was the headline yesterday in Yedioth Ahronoth, a daily newspaper.According to the paper’s poll, the most dramatic of three published yesterday, Shinui, a party which has stormed up the polls on a promise to curb the influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews, is snapping at Labour’s heels for second place.Shinui is predicted to win 17-18 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, with Labour just ahead, winning 18 or 19. Moreover, the party is still haemorrhaging votes – the Yedioth poll put it a seat down from Monday’s predictions.Mr Sharon’s Likud Party is far out ahead, slated to win 33 or 34 seats, and it is still gaining ground.

Two other polls were equally disastrous for Labour, though they did not predict quite as strong showings for either Likud or Shinui.Mr Mitzna can take comfort in the fact that the pollsters have got it wrong before in Israel. And a huge number of voters still remain undecided – as many as 16 per cent according to a poll in the newspaper Ha’aretz yesterday.It is believed the undecided could account for as many as 20 seats in the Knesset, and half of them are believed to be completely unsure.So bad is Labour’s current showing that Mr Mitzna’s rivals within the party are already sharpening their knives.Shimon Peres, 79, publicly stated yesterday he had no intention of taking over in a last-minute leadership change. Mr Mitzna’s opponents proposed the plan after a poll predicted the party would do much better with Mr Peres in charge.Meanwhile the violence continued as at least three Israelis were shot dead yesterday when their car was ambushed south of Hebron.Israeli sources said the dead were soldiers travelling in a military vehicle. According to rescue services, suspected Palestinian militants opened fire on the vehicle at a junction near the Arab village of Yatta.The Israeli army was combing the area for the attackers last night. In the past, militant attacks so close to an election were thought to have played into the hands of the more hardline Israeli parties.Hebron, where Israeli army patrols protect about 450 Jewish settlers who live in the midst of tens of thousands of Palestinians, has long been a flashpoint. The settlers are slowly edging Palestinians out of the old city, and Palestinians are often forced to live under curfew to allow settlers to walk the streets. ¿ Israeli attack helicopters fired at least five missiles at targets in the southern and eastern districts of Gaza City early this morning, witnesses said.

It was not immediately clear what the targets were, and no casualties were reported. Earlier, about 20 Israeli tanks entered Gaza City from the south.. Iraqi documents, obtained by the BBC, appear to suggest that Saddam Hussein is preparing to use chemical weapons against Western troops in the event of war. They also include details of testing of unmanned submarines designed to attack ships in the Gulf and information on fibre-optic radar systems and plans of the layout of presidential palaces. The Secretary General of the Iraqi National Coalition Tawfik al-Yassiri is a former Brigadier-General in the Iraqi army and claims that his organisation has extensive contacts within Saddam’s military.

He told the Today programme: “We received the documents from inside Iraq, passed by people who left Iraq “We have checked the information in other ways. We have members in our organisation in most of the camps and cities in Iraq, from soldiers to generals.” Toby Dodge, an Iraq specialist from Warwick University, looked at the documents for the programme. He said: “The documents that you have supplied me seem to be genuine and they would represent what my best analysis of Iraqi planning would be for the coming conflict. “If you look at Iraqi troop deployments, these groups would be the recipients of all that Saddam had, in training and modern weapons and in chemical and biological weapons protection apparatus.” Bill Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector, told Today: “The key point is that the Republican Guard have been issued this new equipment. “During inspections, I have seen their standard decontamination equipment is 1960s Soviet-model and not very good at all. “If both these two units have new equipment, then it would indicate that they are prepared to use chemical weapons.