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Palestinian PFLP Avenges Israeli Assassination of Leader
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Sept 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by the Israeli military last month, claimed responsibility for bomb blasts which injured three Israelis in East Jerusalem Monday, Israeli public radio reported.
It quoted leaflets distributed in the West Bank signed by the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, which also threatened more attacks to come in retaliation for the murder of its leader, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Monday.
PFLP chief Mustafa was the most senior Palestinian leader to be killed in a campaign of Israeli assassination attacks. Helicopter gunships fired a missile through the window of his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah on August 27th, killing him.
In an interview published in the independent Jordanian weekly, Al-Hadath, Monday, PFLP political bureau member Abu Ahmad Fuad said the group planned revenge attacks inside Israel and against Israeli leaders.
"The PFLP plans on retaliating to the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa with military operations in the West Bank, Gaza Strip or even territory occupied in 1948" by Israel, Fuad said Monday, quoted by AFP.
"We could also target Israeli leaders ... but not children or unarmed civilians as the Zionist media says," Fuad said.
"The Front has reached an agreement with the [various] Palestinian factions to carry out joint military operations in reaction to the assassination" of Mustafa by the Israeli military, he added.
A woman was wounded Monday when a car bomb exploded in the shopping center of the settlement of Giva Hatzarfatit, or French Hill, in the north of occupied East Jerusalem, police said.
Two more people were slightly hurt when a bomb, placed in a car belonging to the Jerusalem municipality, went off near a filling station in the settlement of Gilo.
Both Jewish settlements were created on Palestinian lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War, a move never recognized by the international community.
Earlier, two bombs were discovered in French Hill and neighboring Maalot Dafna districts, police said. The first exploded as the police were preparing to blow it up via a robot, while the second was found under a truck.
Overnight, two Israelis were slightly wounded when their cars came under Palestinian fire near Nataf, in Israeli territory north of occupied Jerusalem, and near Hebron in the West Bank.
A Molotov cocktail was also thrown at a police vehicle in occupied east Jerusalem's Old City, causing no injuries.
In the Gaza Strip, a military spokesman said grenades were hurled at an Israeli occupation army post near Rafah, on the border with Egypt. There were no casualties.
The move came after a Palestinian man died early Monday of wounds received after being shot by Israeli occupation soldiers, a spokesman at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital said.
Khaled Awaja, 29, was seriously wounded when Israeli soldiers shot him 10 days ago; he died of his wounds, the spokesman said.
His death brings to 763 the number of people killed since the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, started on September 28th of last year; the toll includes 585 Palestinians, mostly children and teenagers, and 156 Israelis.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts continued to broker a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hoped to drum up support from Russia for his fight against Palestinian resistance during a visit to Moscow starting later Monday.
Before leaving for the Russian capital, he was to meet Javier Solana at the start of a Middle East tour by the European Union foreign policy chief, which will also include talks Tuesday with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Solana will also visit Jordan on Tuesday to meet King Abdullah II and then goes on to Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
Diplomatic sources said he would try throughout his tour to shore up support for a proposed meeting between Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
But, Peres told Israeli public radio Monday that no date or venue had been fixed.
Mubarak, for his part, headed for talks in Damascus with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, Egyptian sources said, two days after talks with King Abdullah in Alexandria, which were also followed by a telephone conversation on Sunday.
Jordanian officials also said Arafat arrived early Monday in Amman for talks with King Abdullah and Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb.
Arafat flew in from Durban, South Africa, where he was attending a U.N. anti-racism conference that has soured Israeli relations with the world body.
Mordechai Yadid, head of Israel's delegation, told a news briefing Sunday that he had told U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson that "we are at a critical junction in our relationship with the U.N. and its different institutions, including the Human Rights Commission."
Held on the sideline of the U.N. conference, a human rights forum of up to some 6,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) produced a final declaration Sunday that accused Israel of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The declaration recommended international sanctions against Israel, called it "a racist apartheid state" and demanded an end to the "ongoing, Israeli systematic perpetration of racist crimes, including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians,
The International Herald Tribune online reported.
The forum's final resolution was presented to Mary Robinson, for inclusion in a final declaration by the U.N. conference.
The majority of the forum groups agreed to equate Zionism - the political movement that led to the establishment of Israel on the land of Palestine - with racism,
The Tribune reported.
Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories was also decried as colonialism.
The forum also recommended that the United Nations form a committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes.
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