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Israel Breaches Test Of Calm, Attacks Syrian Positions
GAZA CITY, July 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A 15-year-old Palestinian boy died of his wounds Sunday after being shot during the weekend by Israeli occupation troops in clashes in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.
Ahmad Yassin was shot in the neck Friday near the Karni border crossing east of Gaza City and died around midday (0900 GMT) Sunday, they said, AFP French News Agency reported.
According to western figures, Yassin's death brings to 630 the total number of those killed, most of them Palestinians, since the uprising or Intifada erupted late September.
In another Israeli attack, two Palestinians were shot dead in Jerusalem by Israeli occupation troops in the West Bank Sunday, scuttling hopes of establishing a week-long period of calm that would get the two sides back on the road to the negotiating table.
Palestinian officials said one of those killed belonged to the Palestinian Hamas occupation resistance group and the other to the Palestinian police force.
An Israeli army spokesman said they were part of a five-man commando unit carrying bombs and assault rifles, news agencies reported.
Also Sunday an Arab Israeli driver was shot and wounded in the leg by Palestinian gunmen while making deliveries to Jewish settlements.
The incidents came as a violation of a "cool-off period" decided by both parties following U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell's visit to the region last week.
Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, insisted Sunday that the
Israeli government had the final say over when a week-long test period of calm with the Palestinians would begin.
Peres told public radio that Powell, during his lightning visit last week to try to shore up the Israeli-Palestinian truce, had indicated Israel would be the one to decide.
"If there is a serious incident, the prime minister can re-set the clock to zero," said Peres, who met with Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, in Lisbon at the weekend.
There has been no let-up in the violence despite a three-day mission by Powell that ended Friday to firm up an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire brokered by U.S. intelligence chief, George Tenet, on June 13.
Powell got the two sides to agree on a week-long period of total calm before moving forward with a peace plan drafted by former U.S. senator, George Mitchell, but there has already been sharp disagreement on when the seven-day test begins.
Israeli officials, with U.S. backing, say there must be absolute calm for seven days before moving forward with the Mitchell plan which calls for six weeks of "cooling off" to be followed by confidence-building gestures, such as a halt to Israeli settlement building in the Palestinian territories.
The Intifada or uprising erupted after peace negotiations ground to a halt, and Sharon paid a provocative visit to a Jerusalem mosque that is one of the holiest sites in the world for Muslims.
Meanwhile Israeli warplanes opened another front when they wounded three Syrian soldiers and destroyed their radar station in eastern Lebanon Sunday as the situation on the border escalated following a Hezbollah attack.
The Israeli air raid followed warnings by Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, that Israel held Syria, one of the backers of the Lebanese resistant Hezbollah movement, responsible for Friday's attack which wounded an Israeli soldier, AFP News Agency reported.
An Israeli soldier was seriously wounded in an attack by Hezbollah resistance group on Friday in the occupied Shebaa Farms area, captured by Israel from Syria in 1967, prompting Israeli air-strikes on south Lebanon in retaliation.
Hezbollah has vowed to keep fighting Israel until it leaves the occupied area.
Lebanon and Syria agree the land is Lebanese and should have been included in the Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon last year.
Earlier, Lebanon and its main power-broker, Syria, have insisted that attacks by Israel on Hezbollah groups will threaten the region's fragile security, but Peres said Israel was considering its options.
Israel is "mulling this question over and will take the right decision," Peres told the Israeli radio.
Syria and Lebanon, in an unprecedented joint statement addressed to the United Nations Security Council, said Saturday they would hold Israel responsible "for any new aggression."
The joint statement released on Saturday had said: "Israel will be held responsible for the consequences of any further retaliation on the entire region, world security and peace", BBC online reported.
Meanwhile, the official Syrian daily Tishrin said Sunday that "Israel alone is responsible for the continued occupation of Lebanon. It has maintained its forces in the Shebaa Farms, and Syria and Lebanon will certainly not play policemen for these occupation forces."
In Sunday's Israeli aggression, two Israeli missiles destroyed the Syrian facility near Rayak, 60 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Beirut, police said, wounding three Syrians manning the position and a Lebanese conscript on duty nearby, news agencies reported.
According to BBC Online, witnesses said at least two missiles hit a Syrian position in the plain between the two main towns of Zahle and Baalbek.
Israel planes continued to fly over the area after the 11:55 (08:55 GMT) attack, witnesses said.
An Israeli army spokesman said "Israel will not tolerate attacks from Hezbollah, which is sponsored by Syria, and will use all the means at its disposal to assure the security of its residents along the northern border".
"We cannot let Hezbollah attack without reacting," Israel's deputy defense minister, Dalia Rabin-Filosoff, confirmed on public radio.
But Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who was holding a meeting in the Bekaa region at the moment of the Israeli raid, said "Israel is playing with fire. We will not stand idly by and will react in an appropriate manner", news agencies reported.
Israeli warplanes had already hit a Syrian radar station in the Bekaa on April 16 after a similar Hezbollah strike, killing a Syrian soldier.
The Bekaa Valley is dotted with Syrian radar, anti-aircraft and tank positions.
Hezbollah, which has killed three Israeli soldiers and captured another three in the Shebaa Farms since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon last year, says the pull-out is incomplete until Israeli forces leave the disputed border area.
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