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Marwan Barghouti
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GAZA
CITY, April 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Palestinian
Authority warned Israel of "serious consequences" if any harm
came to Marwan Barghuti, a leader of Palestinian President Yasser
Arafat's Fatah movement arrested Monday by the Israeli army.
"We
are warning the Israeli government not to harm Barghuti, because any
harm will result in serious consequences," cabinet secretary Ahmed
Abdel Rahman told Agence France-Presse (AFP), without specifying what
the consequences might be.
On
Monday, Israeli occupation forces arrested Barghuti, the West Bank chief
of Fatah and one of Israel's most wanted men, his brother Hisham told
AFP.
He
said Barghuti, one of the most active proponents of the Palestinian
Intifada, was seized as he headed for an appointment with his bodyguard
Ahmed Barghuti, another relative, who was also arrested.
Israeli
media said Barghuti was arrested by an elite Israeli squad which
surrounded the house where he was hiding. A number of shots were fired,
which injured no one, Israeli Public Radio said.
Barghuti
is suspected of heading the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of
Fatah which claimed responsibility for a number of resistance operations
against the Israeli occupation forces and inside Israel.
Israeli
occupation forces had been scouring the West Bank for Barghuti since
invading Ramallah on March 29. They probably intercepted the phone call
with his bodyguard.
Israel
attacked the Palestinian preventive security headquarters south of
Ramallah at the start of the invasion, believing he was sheltered there.
It
then invaded his home village of Kobar in search of the 42-year-old
Palestinian activist official.
The
arrest came after a day of scattered Israeli violence across the
Palestinian territories leaving four Palestinians dead and more than a
dozen wounded.
In
the village of Doha, southwest of Bethlehem, Rana Saadi al Karaji, a
24-year-old Palestinian lawyer, was shot dead as Israeli troops
evacuated a building as part of their aggression through the West Bank.
She
reportedly tried to enter the residential building after the Israeli
troops forced everyone out. The army then called in Arabic on resistance
activists said to be inside the block to come out without their weapons.
Three
Palestinian policemen gave themselves up, as well as the head of
Arafat's Bethlehem offices, Palestinian officials said. They added that
the army then fired at the apartment block, believing more Palestinians
were inside.
And
in Labdia, a self-rule village east of Bethlehem, Mohammed Abu Maharib,
29, was shot dead in his car as Israeli soldiers carried out
house-to-house searches, witnesses told AFP.
In
Bethlehem, two Israeli soldiers and a Palestinian activist were injured
when firing erupted around the Church of the Nativity, where some 200
Palestinians have been trapped since Israel's April 2 invasion of the
town.
Two
wounded Palestinian policemen were evacuated from the basilica Monday in
an Israeli army ambulance, sources on both sides confirmed.
The
Israeli army also claimed it destroyed a laboratory in Bethlehem which
had been used by Palestinians to make explosives. 
