Two Palestinians died on Saturday of injuries they sustained during clashes with the occupation troops in the Gaza Strip on Friday, medical sources said.
Clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli army flared in most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip Friday after Israel’s retaliatory attacks against PA bases.
Sources told the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, that Maher Afaneh, 37, dies at dawn, after being shot in the chest near the Muntar crossing point (known to Israelis as Karni).
The second, said WAFA, was shot by the occupation troops in different parts of his body. His identity is not revealed yet.
FEARS OF PALESTINIAN REPRISALS AFTER ISRAEL STORMS PLO OFFICES
Israel's takeover of the unofficial PLO headquarters in east Jerusalem, after a devastating suicide bombing, has sparked threats of Palestinian reprisals as the tit-for-tat violence spirals.
Israeli police descended on the Orient House offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Friday after a Palestinian suicide bomber delivered the most damaging attack on city of the 10-month Intifada, killing himself and 15 others in a crowded west Jerusalem pizza parlour.
The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of tearing up all peace agreements between the two sides, while also condemning other Israeli retaliatory strikes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"The occupation of Orient House and the attacks upon other localities nearby Jerusalem is the equivalent of a unilateral renunciation of all agreements," Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s advisor, Nabil Abu Rudeina, told WAFA.
The Palestinian Authority and the PLO later demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the building where, as dawn broke, an Israeli flag was fluttering before being removed later in the day.
The United States also condemned Israel's seizure of the unofficial PLO headquarters in Jerusalem and a West Bank raid as a "serious political escalation" of the conflict with the Palestinians.
"We are concerned about the Israeli actions against Orient House and the Palestinian town of Abu Dis," on the West Bank, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
"These actions represent a serious political escalation, undermine faith and confidence in a negotiated settlement of this conflict and increase the risk of further deterioration of the political situation."
Later Friday, a senior State Department official said that US Secretary of State Colin Powell had spoken Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to state the US criticism, according to Haaretz newspaper.
The Orient House had become the symbolic cornerstone of Palestinian political presence in east Jerusalem, and was also representative of the 1993 Oslo accords which granted the Palestinians limited autonomy.
Meabwhile, many Israelis were still in shock after the suicide attack, which many had feared would come as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intensified his policy of killing Palestinian resistance fighters, including nine Hamas members since mid-July in pinpoint raids.
Political sources quoted Sharon as saying Israel would hold the building until the Palestinian Authority “renounced terrorism,” but when asked directly how long its occupation would last he reportedly said: "For good."
Sharon also accused Arafat of inciting bombers and not arresting known "terrorists" before the restaurant bombing, which also injured more than 80 people, several of them seriously.
The United States was joined by Russia and European nations in demanding that Israel and the Palestinians seek reconciliation and negotiations.
According to AFP, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the violence jeopardized security throughout the world, while France and Germany both decried the escalation in violence.
Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries officially at peace with Israel, blasted the Jewish state's reprisal for the suicide bomb attack, which both states had also strongly condemned.
Tension spiraled anew over Israel's counterattacks in the occupied territories as eight Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip, WAFA said.
Israeli security forces opened fire on stone-throwing Palestinians near the Muntar border crossing into Israel on Friday evening, medical sources said.
In a separate clash about the same time in the West Bank, Palestinian security sources said Israeli forces fired tank missiles and heavy machine guns at Palestinians near the army checkpoint at Betunya, southwest of Ramallah, although no one was injured, WAFA added.
Israeli mourners also hurried to bury the dead from the suicide bombing before the start of the Jewish Sabbath at nightfall – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
