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Israel Seizes Palestinian Areas In Gaza
JERUSALEM, April 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel has re-occupied parts of the Gaza Strip after launching fierce air, land and sea strikes on Palestinian security posts Monday night, the BBC reports.
Israel has vowed to keep its forces in Palestinian areas it seized in the Gaza Strip Monday, as fears grew that hostility would escalate on both the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts as three Palestinians were killed in separate incidents in the West Bank and Gaza, bringing the number of people killed to 480 in almost seven months of unrest.
Israeli forces recaptured some land in the Gaza Strip for the first time since the Palestinians were granted limited autonomy in 1994 after using helicopter gun ships, tanks and bulldozers to attack Palestinian security posts in "retaliation" for a mortar shelling of the nearby Israeli desert town of Sderot that caused neither victims nor damage.
As the strikes were being carried out, Israeli tanks took up positions on Palestinian land and blocked main roads, reportedly killing a police officer at Beit Hanun. Another 30 people were reported injured in the offensive, the BBC adds.
The Israeli army said it would keep hold of the area near Beit Hanun, near the border with Israel, until Palestinian mortar shelling halted, but that it had no intention of re-conquering Palestinian areas.
With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledging to use a tough hand to end the violence, Israel has launched a series of "pre-emptive" and "retaliatory" raids against Palestinian targets in recent days in an escalating cycle of strike and counter-strike.
"We will continue our operations as necessary while there is still Palestinian mortar fire against Israeli towns," army spokesman Brigadier General Ron Kitrey told army radio.
He said the army had taken control of sectors in the Gaza Strip that represent a "direct threat," as well as two corridors traversing the area between Israeli territory and the Mediterranean Sea, dividing the area into three.
"It is not an occupation, but rather control of a strip of land several hundred meters wide, at one point one kilometer [more than half a mile] in the northeastern Gaza Strip," he said on public radio.
However, General Yair Naveh, commander of the Gaza division, told reporters on Tuesday that the army could stay in Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip for "days or months," following its incursion into the area.
"Israeli forces could rest days, one month or several months to prevent further mortar attacks against Israeli territory," Naveh said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also said the army had "no intention" of remaining in sectors under the control of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's self-rule authority.
He refused to hold Arafat directly responsible for the mortar attacks, later claimed by the military wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
Arafat's advisor, Nabil Abu Rudeina, branded the land seizure as a "scandalous violation" of peace agreements, and demanded international intervention.
"We demand the Israeli government immediately stop its attacks," he told AFP, adding that the Palestinians were in contact with the European Union, the United States and the United Nations.
Arafat himself was holding talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss the situation, following talks on Monday in Amman with Jordan's King Abdullah II and on Tuesday slammed Israel's overnight raids on the Gaza Strip and its re-occupation of some Palestinian land as an "unforgivable crime."
"This military escalation is a vicious attempt to bring our people to their knees, but the world should realize that these [Palestinian] people will not give into gangs," Arafat told reporters on arrival back in the West Bank from a trip to Egypt.
Arafat said the overnight Israeli operation was "a flagrant violation [of accords] and an unforgivable crime."
The Palestinian leader said he regretted the fact that the United Nations Security Council "has not yet moved in the face of the sinful aggression," after the United States last month vetoed a U.N. resolution that would have dispatched an observer force to the Palestinian territories.
"Let the world know that our people ... will establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital," he continued.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Hassan Asfour blasted the move, reports CNN. "It's clear that Israel has expanded the sphere of war with the Palestinians," he said. "It has carried out a new and dangerous step by reoccupying Palestinian areas."
Israeli shelling continued Tuesday morning, killing a member of the Palestinian security forces near Beit Hanun, one of the areas that came under fire overnight.
In addition, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by an Israeli bullet near the Karni crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel Tuesday, medical sources said, although witnesses did not report any clashes in the area.
And in Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, soldiers shot dead a Palestinian they said was trying to knife one of them at an army checkpoint.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer warned that the situation could deteriorate following the escalation of violence in the Palestinian territories and the latest flare-up on the Lebanese front.
On Monday, Israeli warplanes attacked a Syrian military radar site in Lebanon, killing at least one Syrian soldier, in "retaliation" for a deadly weekend attack by members of Lebanon's Hezbollah on an Israeli military position in the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
"The situation is not going to get easier, rather more difficult, perhaps even an all-out regional deterioration," Ben Eliezer was quoted as saying by the Maariv newspaper.
But Peres said he did not believe there was a risk of a wider conflict.
"I don't think there is a risk of a conflict such as those that pitted the Arab nations against Israel in June 1967 or October 1973," Peres told public radio.
"All those wars took place during the Cold War period, when the Soviet Union was supplying Arab nations with weapons and funds, which is not the case now," said the Nobel peace prize laureate, regarded as the leading dove in Sharon's government.
The widening conflict brought condemnation from the United States - mostly against the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians - and calls from the United Nations for a return to peace talks.
Palestinian cabinet ministers accused Israel of raising the stakes in the region.
"The Israelis are now reoccupying the Gaza Strip," said Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath, adding that coupled with the Israeli strike against Syrian targets in Lebanon earlier this week, "there is a serious threat of an explosion in all these areas," the Washington Post reports.
Russia voiced "extreme concern" Tuesday at the escalating violence in the Middle East and called on both Israel and the Arab world to exercise restraint.
The European Commission appealed to all parties to the Middle East conflict for "restraint and calm," but once again admitted that it could not use the EU's developing conflict prevention mechanisms in the region.
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