Palestinians try to remind the world of their catastrophe

NABLUS, West Bank, Oct 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A second Palestinian teenage stone-thrower was shot and killed within 24 hours Saturday, October 5, in the West Bank, while the Palestinian resistance group Hamas said its activists ambushed an Israeli army patrol in the northern Gaza Strip Saturday morning, setting off two bombs as the soldiers went by.  

Amar Rajab, 15, was among a group of youths defying a curfew in Ein Beth Ilma refugee camp, near Nablus in the northern West Bank, and throwing stones at the occupation army jeeps, Palestinian witnesses and hospital sources said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).  

The Israeli soldiers in the vehicles answered with live bullets.  

The hospital sources added that five other Palestinians were wounded in Nablus and the surrounding area in other incidents with Israeli troops.  

On Friday, a teenager was killed in similar circumstances in the northern border village of Barta'a.  

A 12-year-old also suffered critical head injuries Friday after being hit by Israeli fire in another refugee camp near Nablus, with the army claiming it had opened fired after its troops came under fire by gunmen.  

There was no immediate army reaction to the latest killing in the two-year Palestinian Intifada.  

Meanwhile, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed the attack in Gaza Strip against the Israeli occupation forces there, and said the Israelis suffered a number of casualties. Hamas said, in a statement, that the attack came as an initial response to Israel’s attempt on the life of Hamas leader Abu Dief on September 26. The Palestinian leader escaped death.  

For its part, the Israeli army confirmed that there had been one explosion, but denied that there had been any casualties.  

Killings by Israeli occupation forces are a daily routine

Trying to justify the army’s continuous aggressions on the Palestinian civilians, in violation of international law protecting peoples under occupation, Israel's army chief of staff said the "terror infrastructure" in the West Bank had been hit hard, but that further work was needed in the Gaza Strip.  

Israel, riding the wave of the so-called U.S.-led war on terror following the September 11 attacks, has been doing its best to link the legal right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation with “terrorism”, analysts believe.  

Israeli troops re-occupied much of the West Bank in June, imposing curfews there and carrying out raids and abductions that dealt a serious blow to Palestinian resistance groups there.  

"The terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) has been hit hard," General Moshe Yaalon was quoted in the Ha’aretz daily as saying in a speech to a Tel Aviv business group Friday.  

"(But) in the Gaza Strip there is still a long way to go."  

Without mentioning Yasser Arafat by name, Yaalon also said the decision to end Palestinian "terror" could only be made by the head of the Palestinian Authority, but "with the current one, this will probably not happen."  

He claimed the current Palestinian leadership still does not recognize Israel's existence as a Jewish state, and wants to use terror and demographics to impose a Palestinian state stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Jordan.  

In London, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday that Prime Minister Tony Blair's drive for Middle East peace talks has been rebuffed by U.S. President George W. Bush, only days after he flagged the plan, amid gathering clouds of war over Iraq.  

At his Labor Party conference, the Prime Minister pushed Tuesday, October 1, for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks, backed by an international conference before the end of the year.  

According to The Guardian, Bush blocked the initiative and made it clear to Blair that he does not want such talks to be held in the near future.  

Israeli public radio also said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will visit Washington later this month, after being invited by Bush, to discuss the stale-mated position in the Middle East conflict amid the U.S. plans to invade Iraq.  

Arafat charged Israel is using the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq as a smokescreen to launch major attacks on the Palestinian people.  

"There is no doubt that the Israelis are using the attack against Iraq and the fact that the world has become preoccupied and focused on what is happening there as an opportunity to launch major operations against our people," in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Arafat told a Spanish newspaper.  

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