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Israeli Police Kill Palestinian, Wound Another in Latest Attacks
JERUSALEM, Nov. 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip and wounded another Friday near Lod, east of Tel Aviv and not far from Ben-Gurion International airport, Israeli army radio said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
A police spokesman claimed the police were "acting on information concerning the risks of an attack." He added that police had searched orange groves and fired on two Palestinians.
The radio claimed the dead Palestinian had been allegedly living in Israel illegally. The wounded man, who was slightly hurt, had been arrested along with a third Palestinian, also from the Gaza Strip. The radio also reported that the Israeli employer of the unidentified Palestinians was also arrested.
Friday's death brought to 972 the number of people killed since the start of the
Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which broke out in September 2000. The victims include over 800 Palestinians.
The current Intifada erupted when former General Ariel Sharon marched onto the Al-Aqsa Mosque - Islam's third holiest shrine - in Jerusalem's occupied Old City flanked by about 1,000 armed Israeli soldiers in September of 2000.
Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, two Israeli tanks invaded almost a kilometer into a Palestinian-ruled area at Beit Hanoun near Erez, Palestinian security sources said.
Sources also told AFP that Israeli bulldozers, accompanied by tanks, leveled olive and orange groves.
Twelve other houses were badly damaged by tank or machine-gun fire, Palestinian officials said.
"It was a night of absolute terror," resident Fatin Meqdad told The
Independent. "We had to wake up the children and move them to a friend's house further inside the camp." She said she spent hours after the raid trying to calm her six children.
The Israeli army justified this assault - which came after a few relatively quiet days in the Occupied Territories - by claiming that the area had been used as a cover for mortar and gunfire on nearby Israeli settlements.
A Palestinian was also wounded by Israeli gunfire in the neighboring village of Beit Bahia, according to hospital sources.
In an example of the army's latest tactic of mounting short, sharp and ruthless raids, Israeli troops also swept into the West Bank village of Shawawreh, near Bethlehem. Soldiers arrested eight people, claiming they were "suspected militants" before withdrawing.
Ignoring persistent appeals from the United Nations and the United States to withdraw of Palestinian-run territory, Israel again dispatched its tanks yesterday into the Gaza Strip and raided an Arab village on the West Bank.
The Israeli army also remains inside West Bank cities of Jenin and Tulkarm, which were re-occupied along with four other Palestinian-ruled towns last month.
The Israeli invasions Thursday left one Palestinian dead, 14 others injured, and at least two houses in ruins, the British daily newspaper,
The Independent.
An Israeli military spokesman alleged that the Palestinians retaliated by firing a
homemade rocket for the first time at an Israeli army position on the edge of the Gaza Strip at dawn Friday. The shell exploded but caused no casualties or damage to the army post at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Palestinian-ruled territory.
Palestinians also fired three mortars into Israel, east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, and a fourth at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim, causing no casualties, the Israeli military spokesman claimed.
The latest violence came shortly before a European Union delegation, including the European Commission president, Romano Prodi, and the E.U. foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, was due to arrive for talks with Palestinian and Israeli officials.
Both sides are now waiting for a policy speech that the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to deliver on Monday, to see if it contains any signs of a change in America's Middle East strategy.
But analysts believe the most that can be expected from the U.S. is that it will send an envoy to the region and offer more appeals to implement the Mitchell report, which includes a freeze on the building of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.
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