OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, Aug 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli
occupation forces abducted Thursday, August 8, 30 Palestinians,
including nine in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia where
tanks made a major incursion for a second day, killed a Palestinian
youth in Gaza City and injured four other youths in the West Bank town
of Ramallah.
The
other 21 abducted men were taken in overnight raids across the West
Bank, including three in Bethlehem, an army spokeswoman said without
giving details.
In
Gaza City, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian youth as they stepped
up their policy of raids, arrests and house demolitions after security
talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials about the so-called
"Gaza First" plan failed to make headway, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
youth was fatally wounded as the Israeli army staged a new incursion
into the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian
security sources and witnesses said.
Four
other youths were wounded as around 25 Israeli tanks and armored troop
carriers stormed the town, with four accompanying bulldozers razing
farmland in the area, the sources told AFP.
The
renewed surge of military offensives came just hours after the
foundering overnight of talks between Israeli and Palestinian
officials on a proposed Israeli security plan.
Nabil
Abu Rudeina, a close aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat,
placed the blame squarely on Israel, saying Israel had imposed a set
of new conditions on the security plan.
As
those talks faltered, a Palestinian delegation led by chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, and including newly appointed
interior minister Abdel Razaq al-Yahya, was set to meet with U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington to discuss Palestinian
security reforms.
The
Palestinian cabinet had earlier given a tentative green light to the
Israeli proposal, entitled "Gaza First," during an emergency
session. As one minister said, they had no choice but to accept, after
it was green-lighted by Egypt, Jordan, the United States and Israel.
"Israel
went back on its position of Monday under which the security plan
would also be applied to Bethlehem after Gaza, saying it would only be
applied to Gaza, and adding many new conditions," Abu Rudeina
said without giving further details.
International
cooperation minister Nabil Shaath said the Israelis "didn't
really respond to any of the clarifications we asked them.
"They're
not going to pull out of Gaza ... it's going to be partial, even in
Gaza; they will not allow the kind of freedom of movement for our
policemen that we requested," he told BBC television.
He
said the Palestinian side also rejected any implication that
"Gaza is different from the West Bank, that Gaza is something
they may allow but the West Bank is a place they want to keep
occupying forever."
Mark
Sofer, a senior foreign ministry official, said Israel allegedly had
no intention of staying indefinitely in the seven main West Bank towns
and cities it has re-occupied.
"What
we should do first of all is to look at Gaza, deal with Gaza and when
the Gaza issue has been solved ... we can start certainly looking
elsewhere," he said.
Abu
Rudeina said there was no schedule for a resumption of talks, although
Sofer claimed they would continue next week.
The
proposal was presented to Yahya by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin
Ben Eliezer at a meeting Monday, August 5.
Meanwhile,
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon described Thursday President
Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority as a "gang of corrupt
assassins and terrorists," in a move that highly contradicted
with the Israeli government’s decision to hold talks with the PA.
"To
launch a real political process that could lead to peace, there is an
obstacle with the gang of corrupt assassins and terrorists that lead
the Palestinian Authority," Sharon said at a graduation ceremony
at the National Security college in Tel Aviv broadcast on public
television, AFP reported.
Sharon,
who spoke after a second round of security talks with the Palestinians
floundered Wednesday, claimed there was no hope for progress with the
current Palestinian leadership.
Meanwhile,
Israel pressed ahead with more military offensives in the occupied
territories.
Occupation
forces destroyed the family homes of four Palestinian activists who
were involved in martyr operations, sources close to the families
said.
In
the West Bank town of Ramallah, four Palestinian youths were injured
Thursday when a crowd of stone-throwing youngsters clashed with
Israeli forces near the Arafat headquarters, hospital sources told
AFP.
Three
of the youths were hit by rubber-coated bullets fired by the forces
occupying the town, just north of occupied Jerusalem. The fourth was
hit by a live bullet, medics said.
Crowds
of young Palestinians often gather near Arafat's headquarters when the
curfew is lifted by the army, venting their anger at the
re-occupation, which has lasted more than seven weeks.
The
Israeli army has re-occupied 7 out of 8 major West Bank cities. The
only city left out is Jericho.
And
in Tulkarem, Palestinians were preparing for the funeral procession of
assassinated Fatah member Zeyad Da’as and two other civilians,
including a high school student who was shot dead by the Israeli
forces on his way back home from school where he had gone to receive
his High School certificate.
The
funeral procedures were set to begin before noon Thursday, but the
Israeli army refused to lift the curfew it clamped on the town, and
threatened to shoot at any procession.
The
army approved of a funeral service for the dead on the condition only
15 members of every martyr’s family could attend
