Resting after finishing the job in Jabalya refugee camp

GAZA CITY, March 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Israeli army units with dozens of tanks continued to occupy areas in the northern Gaza Strip early Friday, March 7, as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has named Palestine Liberation Organization's number two as his first Prime Minister.

Security sources on both sides told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that around 60 tanks and armored personnel carriers together with bulldozers were posted in open areas near the towns of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun, close to the refugee camp of Jabalya.

A Palestinian policeman was shot and wounded by Israeli troops in the area early Friday, the sources said.

An Israeli army spokesman said the operation was open-ended and chiefly aimed at preventing home-made rockets from being fired over the border on the southern Israeli town of Sderot.

"Our forces will stay on the ground as long as needed," a senior military official was quoted as saying by army radio, adding that bulldozers had razed vegetation in order to spot rocket launchers.

Some 30 Israeli armored vehicles advanced into Beit Lahia Thursday night after several home-made Qassam rockets were fired over the border into Israel, causing no injuries.

The rockets, built by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, have a range of up to 12 kilometers (eight miles), but they are inaccurate and have to date not caused any harm.

Taking advantage of the world’s preoccupation with a looming invasion of Iraq, Israel launched a massive incursion in the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing 15 and wounding more than a hundred Palestinians.

The British Independent newspaper quoted witnesses as saying that the first burst of shrapnel that cut down a fireman, Abu Jalili, came from an Israeli tank. They said it fired a shell, designed to inflict mass casualties, straight at the fireman, who was trying to put out a fire.

The flechettes and shrapnel, they added, ripped through a crowd of people, who were trying to rescue the wounded.

"They targeted us. We were about to put the fire out when they shot at us," said Kemal al-Madhun, the fireman who was standing behind Abu Jalili as he fell. His voice was straining under the pain from his back, which was hit by shrapnel in several places.

There were also Israeli claims that the Palestinian casualties were caused by a booby trap in the furniture store intended to kill Israeli soldiers. The Israelis said every care had been taken to avoid civilian casualties.

Abu Mazen is not a popular figure among ordinary Palestinians

However, from the television footage it was clear that the shrapnel which killed the fireman did not come from the furniture store, but from an entirely different direction, according to the paper.

Then, the machine-gun fire began. All the fire came from the same end of the street as the first burst of shrapnel, and Palestinians fled from it – which meant it was certainly Israeli fire.

The gun opened up again and again. When it had been silent for a while and the civilians crept towards the fire, it opened up again, sending them running in panic.

Abu Mazen Offered Premiership

On the political front, Arafat offered Mahmoud Abbas, his right-hand man, the job of Prime Minister.

Arafat proposed Abbas, 68, fill the post of Prime Minister he is creating under intense international pressure to reform the Palestinian Authority, which has been accused of corruption and links to “resistance groups”, according to AFP.

A senior official said Arafat made the offer at a meeting of the PLO executive in the West Bank city of Ramallah but Abbas refused to immediately accept.

Abbas, better known by his nom de guerre as Abu Mazen, said he wanted to wait for the "legal procedures which will define exactly the prerogatives" of the post and see what his future role would be.

Abbas has been a front-runner to fill the Prime Minister's job Arafat pledged to create under international pressure to reform, and he recently announced a year-long "demilitarization" of the Palestinian Intifada.

He specifically told Arafat the nomination should wait for meetings of the PLO's central council and the parliamentary Palestinian Legislative Council expected to open Saturday in Ramallah. Both bodies have to vote on the matter.

A noted pragmatist, Abbas was one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel which lie in tatters after 29 months of bitter fighting, but is not a popular figure among ordinary Palestinians.