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Fresh Mideast Violence Mocks Diplomatic Efforts
GAZA CITY, May 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Despite the continuing flurry of diplomatic talks, the bloody conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians rages on.
In the latest attacks, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and wounded in the leg when Israeli soldiers at a Jewish settlement opened fire early Monday on Palestinian homes in the southern Gaza Strip, medical sources said.
Mohammed Jabr Abu Samhadana was hit by a live round from an M-16 assault rifle but was in stable condition after the incident in which troops at the Morag settlement in Rafah opened fire, they added.
Israeli troops on the Rafah border post with Egypt also opened heavy machine gun fire on the nearby Yebna refugee camp, damaging three homes but causing no injuries, Palestinian security sources added.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers also penetrated autonomous Palestinian territory to a depth of between 150 and 200 meters (yards) east of Gaza City Monday, Palestinian security officials said.
The Israeli military's bulldozers flattened the land and destroyed trees, the officials said.
It was the first Israeli raid Monday into areas under full Palestinian civil and security control in violation of peace agreements between the two sides, they added.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared last Tuesday a unilateral ceasefire, banning Israeli raids into Palestinian autonomous areas and firing upon Palestinians except in dangerous situations.
But Palestinians accused Israel Sunday of 96 violations since Sharon's announcement of the ceasefire.
A leader of the Islamic Jihad movement here vowed Monday that his group would pursue attacks "deep inside Israel" after a spate of attacks claimed by Palestinian Islamic resistance fighters and others.
"We will continue carrying out our martyr attacks deep inside Israel, which will topple Sharon," Islamic Jihad spokesman Abdallah Shami told a rally of 1,000 university students in Gaza City. Groups represented at the rally included both the secular Fatah faction's youth organization and the Islamic Jihad.
Sharon, a hardline former general loathed by Palestinians, was elected Israel's prime minister in February, largely on his promise to crush the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, but in response to Israeli aggression, Palestinian retaliatory strikes have surged since he took office.
As the Intifada enters its ninth month, resistance groups of all stripes now coordinate attacks on Israeli targets, Fatah faction leaders told AFP news agency last week.
Islamic Jihad, whose headquarters are in Damascus, claimed responsibility for a car bombing early Sunday in central Jerusalem, which Israeli police said lightly injured two people.
The bombing came hours after another blast in the same area of Jerusalem, which caused no injuries, and was claimed by the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Islamic Jihad also claimed a bombing in the Israeli town of Hadera on Friday, which killed the two attackers and wounded 12 Israelis.
In Sharon's nearly three months in office, there have been 12 major Palestinian retaliatory attacks, compared to only 10 such attacks in the five months of the Intifada before he took office.
In the latest diplomatic moves, U.S. Middle East envoy William Burns was due to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat later Monday to pursue further talks to end the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, a Palestinian official said.
An official of Sharon's office meanwhile said that Burns would also meet Sharon late Monday or on Tuesday, and would give him "Yasser Arafat's reply to Israeli ceasefire proposals."
"We had a constructive meeting about the implementation of the Mitchell report on ending the violence and resuming negotiations," Burns told reporters after meeting with Arafat here Sunday.
Burns, also the ambassador to Jordan, on Sunday, met later in Jerusalem with Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk.
Peres did not specify whether Israel had accepted the freeze on all Jewish settlement activities recommended by the Mitchell report into the eight-month unrest that was published last week.
Meanwhile, Sweden's Prime Minister Goeran Persson is planning to meet separately with Arafat and Sharon, a government spokeswoman said.
Persson will first meet with Arafat on Wednesday in Copenhagen, then with Sharon on June 6th in Brussels, spokeswoman Anna Hilsen said Monday.
Last week, Sharon called on the European Union to press Arafat to follow Israel's lead and call for a halt to deadly violence engulfing the region.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak also added his voice to the chorus in accusing Sharon of trying to dupe the world by announcing a ceasefire that it has failed to implement, in remarks published Monday.
"He is deceiving world public opinion," the Egyptian leader told Egyptian newspaper editors Sunday on the return leg of a brief Arab tour to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Russia also launched a new diplomatic mission in the region, as its envoy Yevgeny Primakov began a tour of the region in Jordan.
"Israel is reacting to the Palestinians with unjustified and disproportionate acts of violence," he said, backing Palestinian denunciations of the ceasefire.
Primakov, said to be a veteran Middle East expert, arrived in the region Saturday on a regional tour taking him to Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
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