The daughter of Abu Swerah, who was killed in an Israeli raid, looks at the rubble of her family home,

GAZA CITY , September 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Few hours after Palestinian President Yasser Arafat made a direct appeal to Israel for a new truce and maintained it can win the backing of Hamas, Israeli forces stormed Thursday, September 18, a Gaza refugee camp and killed a Hamas resistance activist.

Jihad Abu Suheireh, 25, a member of Hamas military wing, Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, breathed his last after Israeli soldiers demolished his house in Nuseirat refugee camp.

Seven other Palestinians were wounded in the Israeli army raid, including the victim's brother and father, witnesses and medical sources said.

Backed up by an assault helicopter gunship, the Israeli soldiers entered the camp in jeeps and tanks from the neighboring Netzarim Jewish settlement near Gaza City and surrounded the house, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The helicopter fired several rockets and razed the building to the ground.

Exchanges of automatic gunfire were heard during the operation and an Israeli military spokesman said two soldiers had been slightly injured.

Israeli helicopters have carried out a series of air attacks on Hamas political and military figures in recent weeks but ground operations remain rare, according to AFP.

The Israeli army radio said it was the largest such ground operation in Gaza in many weeks.

Suheireh's death brings the death toll since the start of the Palestinian Intifada against Israeli occupation nearly three years ago to 3,482, including 2,600 Palestinians and 819 Israelis.

Meanwhile around 30 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles staged an incursion Thursday into the West Bank town of Jenin and surrounded refugee camps and imposed a curfew, Palestinian security sources said.

The Israeli troops exchanged gunfire with Palestinians as they conducted searches, the sources said.

It was not known if anyone was injured in the exchanges.

In the nearby village of Tubas , two Palestinians were arrested by the Israeli military, the sources said.

According to an Israeli military spokesman, two members of the Islamic Jihad group were arrested in the village.

Nine other "wanted" Palestinians were also captured overnight in the West Bank , the spokesman added.

New Truce

This came as Arafat and leaders of his Fatah movement met Thursday to choose ministers in the new Palestinian government, and the Palestinian leader reported progress in truce talks with the Palestinian resistance groups, Reuters said.

"This will be the largest meeting to be organized after a string of meetings," since Arafat nominated parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei, aka Abu Alaa, as his new prime minister on September 7, Fatah deputy Mohammed Hurani told AFP.

"It is expected that today's meeting will take us closer to agreeing on a government," Hurani added.

In a series of interviews with the Israeli media, Arafat made a direct appeal to Israel for a new truce, saying it can win the backing of Hamas.

"Yes, I am ready to renew the hudna. I call on Israel to renew the hudna," he told Thursday's edition of the Yediot Aharonot daily.

"If the Israeli government takes a positive position, we can succeed. I tell the Israelis: enough blood, enough of the destruction and of the daily suffering. Our position has always been against killing Palestinians or Israelis."

Arafat told Yediot that he believed Hamas and Islamic Jihad could be persuaded to halt again their campaign of attacks against Israel .

"Islamic Jihad is already ready, and now we are working on Hamas. So far the results have been positive, there is a positive attitude on their part," he asserted.

And in an interview with the Israeli TV late Wednesday, September 17, Arafat also said that he wanted a truce.

"All the world wants peace, for the good of the Middle East and future generations of both peoples."

Hawkish Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz gave the Arafat proposal short shrift, saying groups such as Hamas had to be dismantled rather than made party to a truce.

" Israel will not make any concessions until the Palestinian government proves its real intentions to seriously tackle the ‘terrorist’ organizations," Mofaz told military radio Thursday.

But Israeli Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzsky, a member of the centrist Shinui party in Sharon 's coalition government, was more welcoming.

"We shouldn't reject the Palestinian proposition," he told Israeli radio.

"We should examine it in detail as it's in our interest. If not, we will be seen abroad as the ones who do not want to hear anything."

Arafat's national security advisor, Jibril Rajoub, called for an indefinite ceasefire between the two sides earlier this week, but his proposal was dismissed as a "honeytrap" by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman.

Survival

Meanwhile in Cairo , Egyptian government newspapers said Thursday that Arafat cannot be bypassed and will be difficult to remove from the political scene despite Israeli threats to get rid of him.

The Palestinian leader "has already survived a plane crash and bomb attacks, and survived all sorts of plots and adventures," editorialist Anis Mansur wrote in the government newspaper Al-Ahram.

Al-Gomhuriya daily recalled how Arafat weathered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 "while (Ariel) Sharon , all smiles, told the press that the PLO infrastructure had been destroyed and Arafat had one foot in the grave."

Sharon was the defense minister who oversaw Israel 's invasion of its northern neighbor 20 years ago to destroy the PLO.

Another government newspaper, Al-Akhbar, drew a comparison between attempts to expel Arafat and the exile of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny to Paris in 1978, which opened the way to the Islamic revolution in Iran .

"History seems to repeat itself," the newspaper wrote. " Sharon does not want to listen to international opinion (...) nor even the advice of those close to him, including the Israeli secret services."

In an emergency meeting on Thursday, September 11, under Sharon , the Israeli security cabinet agreed by majority to outline a plan to expel Arafat. Later, several Israeli ministers and officials called for killing Arafat.

Washington’s veto of a draft U.N. Security Council resolution which would have demanded Israel not to expel Arafat from the occupied Palestinian territories came under fire from several countries Wednesday.