A Palestinian boy attends the funeral of Majdi Moussa, the latest victim of the Israeli occupation army

GAZA CITY, December 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Jewish settler was shot dead on a road in the southern Gaza Strip Friday, December 20, when Palestinian men opened fire on his car, hours after a Palestinian activist was killed in an Israeli raid to the north.

The ambush on the rabbi settler's car occurred near the Kissufim junction, on the main road leading from Israel to the Gush Katif settlement bloc which occupies the southern coastline of the Gaza Strip, sources said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The settler man was identified as rabbi Yitzhak Arama, 40, a father of six from the Orthodox settlement of Netzer Hazzani in the Gush Katif bloc.

Palestinian security officials said intensive fire could be heard from the area, while Israeli sources said the occupation army had given chase to the attackers.

The attack was claimed by the resistance group Islamic Jihad, which said two of its activists successfully returned from the ambush.

Settlers said Arama had been heading to the wedding of the brother of an 18-year-old settler killed on the same road by Palestinian resistance activists in November 2000, shortly after the beginning of the Intifada.

The settler council reacted angrily to the shooting, blaming in part the Israeli government and the Supreme Court, which they said had blocked army requests to demolish Palestinian homes used by snipers.

"Instead of sending out a message that it is fighting against terrorism, the government prefers to destroy settlement outposts," said Gaza settler spokesman Ayran Sternberg, referring to the dismantling of a rogue settlement by the army in al-Khalil (Hebron), in the West Bank, on Thursday.

That settlement outpost was built in commemoration of a Palestinian ambush which killed nine soldiers and three settler security guards.

Confrontations between Jewish settlers and Palestinians often fall into a murky legal area, with the Israeli occupation army, the police and the military's civil administration in the occupied Palestinian territories all involved to varying degrees.

An Israeli army spokesman, who did not want his name used, said soldiers try to prevent conflict between settlers and Palestinians, but that forces are primarily in the area to protect Israeli settlers from attacks by Palestinian resistance activists.

Earlier Friday, a Palestinian activist was killed in an Israeli tank and helicopter raid on the town of Deir El-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, in which six Palestinians were also injured.

Ten Israeli tanks and two bulldozers entered the town, backed up by helicopters which fired machine-guns over the town.

Israeli troops ordered the inhabitants of the home of an activist of Arafat's Fatah movement to evacuate the building before destroying it with explosives, Palestinian security sources said.

The slain man was identified by witnesses as Nadji Mussa, 23, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees which are made up of former members of all Palestinian factions and maintain close ties with each.

Woman Dies of Wounds

In the northern West Bank, more than 40 Palestinians were abducted by the Israeli forces in a sweep of the town of Jenin and surrounding villages. One Israeli soldier was slightly injured in the operation.

In Nablus, a reoccupied Palestinian self-rule city in the northern West Bank, the Israeli army claimed it had discovered a large bomb-making lab where it suspected many of the explosives detonated in recent months had been made.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian woman shot by Israeli soldiers five months ago in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis died of her wounds Friday, hospital sources said.

Sadika Abu Shahlul, 42, had been shot in the stomach, they said.

Her death raises the toll from over two years Intifada against the Israeli occupation to 2,780, 2,050 Palestinians (mostly civilians, women and children) and 681 Israelis.