Israel attempted to kill a Palestinian key leader early Friday and moved tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip, after its withdrawal from the Palestinian town of Beit Jala under international pressure. Meanwhile, Israel was expecting an attack by Lebanon's Hizbollah.
Israeli troops fired anti-tank missiles at the home of Qays Abdul Kareem Samerraie , better known as Qays Abu Leila, the head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) for the West Bank, said reports..
However, Abu Leila told Abu Dhabi satellite channel that he had been warned of expected attacks, so he had not been inside the house in Ramallah in the West Bank.
He said that the noticeable activity of Israeli helicopters in the skies of Ramallah was what prompted the security to ask him to evacuate the house.
However, he said that some of his neighbors were lightly wounded in the attack.
Abu Leila is the number two for the Damascus-based DFLP, which claimed a raid on an army outpost in the Gaza Strip last Saturday that left two Israeli soldiers and a medic dead, as well as two Palestinian attackers.
It was the first infiltration of an Israeli military base since the Palestinians launched their uprising against Israel last September, and was viewed as a highly embarrassing blow to its image of military might, according to AFP.
At almost the same time Friday, Israel sent tanks and bulldozers into Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in just one of two incursions that appeared to have been suspended to build up trust ahead of an anticipated ceasefire meeting between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
The incursion sparked heavy exchanges of gunfire in the autonomous Palestinian section of Rafah, and two Palestinians were wounded, one badly, Palestinian security sources told AFP.
A Palestinian security position was destroyed and five houses were also damaged during the incursion, the sources said, which followed a smaller one in the central Gaza Strip near a crossing point into Israel.
TV reports said that five blocks of flats were razed by Israeli bulldozers in the area, leaving dozens of residents homeless.
Israeli tanks also fired shells at a Palestinian position in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Israeli settlement of Netzarim, late Thursday, killing a member of Arafat's Force 17, and wounding three other of the elite guards, one seriously.
Israeli military spokesmen had no comment on either of the events, said AFP.
The fresh violence comes as a blow to efforts to get the peace process back on track, after Israeli public radio reported late Thursday that the Beit Jala ceasefire had paved the way for preparations for a meeting between Peres and Arafat aimed at winning a complete ceasefire.
Israel and the Palestinians reached an agreement Wednesday over Beit Jala after US Secretary of State Colin Powell and European countries exerted pressure to end the stand-off over the Palestinian town.
Israeli troops withdrew from the area early Thursday after some 50 hours following an agreement between Arafat and Peres that soldiers would leave after the shooting at the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo stopped.
The meeting between Peres and Arafat could still take place as early as next week, Israeli radio reported, although no date or place has been fixed.
Three other people were killed in the Palestinian territories on Thursday, amid new fears that Lebanon's radical Hizbollah movement could use the Palestinian uprising to launch a new offensive on the northern Israeli front.
Palestinian doctor Musa Safi Kdemat, 50, was shot in the stomach as he rushed away from a battle between soldiers and Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank town of Hebron, Palestinian hospital sources were quoted as saying.
Palestinian police sources said the fighting broke out after Israeli tanks entered into autonomous Palestinian territory in Hebron. They said 23 other people were injured in the fighting, one of them seriously.
The army categorically denied moving into Hebron, but admitted firing tank shells at Abu Sneina, an Arab neighborhood in the heart of the Arab city where 400 Jewish settlers live among 120,000 Palestinians.
Up north, a Palestinian civilian, Daoud Salah Sahmawi, 32, was killed by a bullet to the chest when clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers erupted east of Tulkarem, hospital sources said.
Meanwhile, Amos Tadjuri, an Israeli civilian believed to be in his 60s who had become a good client of a Palestinian restaurant, was shot to death by a masked Palestinian in a restaurant near Ramallah, reports said.
Tadjuri, from the nearby Israeli village of Moddin, was among Palestinian friends in his favorite restaurant in the village of Nahalin, west of Ramallah, when he was shot in the head.
The four deaths brought to 759 the number of people killed since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September, including 581 Palestinians and 156 Israelis, according to AFP’s tally.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Raanan Gissin, told AFP Thursday that Israel had "concrete information that Hizbollah is waiting on the opportune moment to carry out an attack".
Hizbollah fired four times earlier Thursday on Israeli warplanes overflying Lebanese air space -- an Israeli practice the United Nations slams as a violation of the UN-marked border between the two countries, said the agency.
Haaretz reported that Israel sent a strong message to Syria on Thursday that it believed Hezbollah was preparing an attack on the northern border and that if it did so, Israel would hold Damascus responsible.
The security cabinet, including Sharon, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom, Minister Dan Meridor and Interior Minister Eli Yishai flew Thursday morning to Northern Command Headquarters to be briefed on military intelligence reports that Hezbollah was preparing a "spectacular" attack in the north.
By virtue of publicizing the meeting and statements by the defense minister that Syria would be considered responsible for a Hezbollah attack, said the paper, the Syrians were told that Israel would retaliate against their interests in Lebanon if it allowed the Islamic group to take action.
But Israel has also been using diplomatic channels to send the message to Damascus. During conversations with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about the situation in Beit Jala, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres relayed information about the military intelligence reports, asking for them to contact the Syrian and Lebanese governments to send a warning “of Israeli impatience with leniency toward Hezbollah.”
Powell spoke with Annan, saying that if the Lebanese government refused to comply with UN Security Council 425, which called for the Lebanese army to move in after the Israeli withdrawal, the UN should assume responsibility to prevent the Hizbollah attacks. In addition, Washington has contacted Damascus to press home that the US does not regard the northern border as a "side show" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the paper.
The Bush administration does not believe that there is any chance in the meanwhile for renewal of Israeli-Syrian negotiations, and so far has no plans to invite Syrian President Bashar Assad to Washington.
One indication of a possible Hizbollah attack is the sudden removal of the Hezbollah outpost the guerrilla group established just north of Ghajar, the village divided by the UN demarcation of the northern border, Haaretz said – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
