GAZA
CITY, May 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli troops, backed
by four tanks and an armored bulldozer, pushed 200 meters (yards) into a
Palestinian controlled sector of the southern Gaza Strip early
Wednesday, May 15, destroying three houses, as U.S. President George W.
Bush said he wanted what he described as “action” from the
Palestinians on reforms to the Palestinian Authority.
The
Israeli raid into Rafah came the morning after two Palestinians were
slightly wounded by Israeli gunfire in the same area, near the border
with Egypt, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
raid lasted for around five hours. Israeli occupation forces destroyed
three Palestinian houses and damaged several others, Palestinian sources
said.
An
Israeli army spokesman, for his part, reported Palestinian gunfire
against the Jewish colonial settlement of Neve Dekalim near Rafah. No
one was wounded, he said.
An
Israeli military source also said that two mortar bombs were fired late
Tuesday, May 14, against a group of colonial settlements in the southern
Gaza Strip known as Gush Katif, where a house was damaged.
At
the Mawasi checkpoint near Rafah, three Palestinian women were also
injured by Israelis who fired live rounds at them as they tried to reach
their homes in the Mawasi enclave, under curfew since Sunday, May 12.
The women were not seriously injured, medics said.
In
Washington, meanwhile, the U.S. president welcomed Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat's call for overhauling the Palestinian Authority, but said
he wanted what he described as "action" on elections and other
reforms, the White House said Wednesday.
"The
President is looking for action that will lead to a better life for the
Palestinian people and will enhance the prospects for an enduring
peace," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
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| Three
houses were destroyed in the Israeli raids on Gaza.
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Bowing
to international pressure, Arafat called Wednesday for a complete
overhaul of his Palestinian Authority, saying: "We must prepare for
elections and prepare for reforms."
"Yasser
Arafat's words are positive," said Fleischer. "What is
important, and what the President will wait to see, is whether there is
any action."
Fleischer
said the United States "will continue its involvement to help bring
the parties together so that the prospects for peace and for two nations
that can live side by side can be enhanced."
In
another move in the direction of peace on the Palestinian side, E.U.
foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that Arafat has told the
European Union that he plans to organize legislative and municipal
elections at the end of the summer or early autumn.
Solana
said Palestinian elections, if held in the coming months, would give a
welcome fillip to internationally-sponsored efforts to restart the
Middle East peace process.
They
would also give "a bit of breath to democratic life and to the life
of Palestinian structures," he said.
Earlier,
Arafat told a special parliamentary session that he would present
"a new formula for the administration of the Palestinian Authority
and its ministries and security apparatus in order to rebuild it on a
firmer basis."
"We
want to totally separate the judicial, executive and parliamentary
branches," he said.
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| Bush
spoke of PA reforms as Israeli tanks and bulldozers pushed into
Gaza,.
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"We
must prepare for elections and prepare for reforms. But let me have some
time to prepare for that," he said.
"Peace
was and will remain our strategic option. I will never give it away, ...
between us and the Israelis, because peace is in our joint
interest," he said.
Arafat,
speaking on the 54th anniversary of the Nakba (the “Catastrophe),
which marks the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian land and
the expulsion of 70,000 Palestinians from their country, also took
personal responsibility for highly unpopular deals that ended the
Israeli occupation army sieges of his Ramallah headquarters and of
Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.
"I
am fully responsible - do not blame anyone but myself. But whatever
happened, happened based on international guarantees," he told the
assembled deputies.
But
he said reforms, already called for by the international community,
Israel and many of his own ministers and security chiefs, were needed in
the current crisis.
