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Five Palestinians Killed, Two Wounded in West Bank and Gaza Strip
NABLUS, West Bank, Nov 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two senior Palestinian activists were blown up in their car in the West Bank late Tuesday in another Israeli assassination attack as three more Palestinians were killed and two others were wounded in the ongoing violence.
Two Palestinians were wounded, one seriously, when Israeli tanks opened fire with shells and heavy machineguns near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian hospital officials told news agencies.
Mussa Aya, 57, suffered serious head wounds after the tanks shot three shells and opened fire with machineguns on the Talessultan refugee camp near Rafah, the sources said.
A 12-year-old girl, Sali Alshaer, was hit in the leg, said hospital officials, describing her condition as stable.
Local residents also said that more Israeli troops and tanks were moving into the area near Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
Israel has invaded and occupied at least five Palestinian-ruled towns in the past three weeks. The international community, including the U.S., strongly condemned the moves and called for "immediate" and unconditional Israeli
withdrawal.
The car blast in the Jenin refugee camp, which killed two senior Fatah activists, came just hours after three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in a gunbattle near Nablus, around 15 miles (25 kilometers) to the south.
The two men killed in the car blast were identified by a Jenin Fatah leader as Majdi Jaradat, 32, and Ikrima Istiti, 35. Khadura Mussa called the killings an "assassination" by Israel.
He said they were leaders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The Israeli army made no immediate comment on the killings, although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vowed to forge ahead with his controversial tactic of hunting down Palestinians.
The Jewish state's policy of assassinations have been widely condemned by the international community and has been another obstacle in the already worsening relations with the country's chief ally - the U.S.
Last month, a similar car blast killed another Fatah leader. Roughly 70 Palestinian political leaders and figures have been assassinated since the latest Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation began in September 2000.
The latest blast ripped the car apart hours after Israeli troops intercepted three Palestinians heading out of the autonomous Palestinian village of Tell, south of Nablus, and into an area where Israel is in charge of security.
The Israel patrol killed two of the men immediately.
An Israeli officer was fatally wounded in the ensuing hour-long gunbattle - which lasted until the third Palestinian was killed, Israeli army section commander Colonel Yossi Adiri told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Palestinians were identified by hospital officials in Nablus as Iyad Khatib, 28, of the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, Fatah member Jamal Abu Maluh, 22, and Ali Abu Hijleh, 22, of the People's Party.
The Israeli officer's name was not immediately released.
The flare-up came as Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres confirmed he and right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were trying to work out a peace plan to end 13 months of crisis which have cost the lives of 959 people, including over 800 Palestinians.
"We are working on a peace plan and trying to reach a communal position," he told army radio, refusing to give details.
The Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, said Peres' draft plan featured a ceasefire, negotiations with the Palestinians based on U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli withdrawal from land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
It said the Palestinian state would be demilitarized, with borders to be worked out through negotiations and guaranteed by the United States.
Sharon told a meeting of his Likud party on Monday that the plan would not entail the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Peres and Arafat were at a meeting of European and Mediterranean foreign ministers in Brussels Monday and Tuesday.
Both men played down statements by a Belgian spokesman that "direct political dialogue" had been held late Monday during a two-day meeting of European and Mediterranean foreign ministers, hosted by the European Union in Brussels.
Arafat, returning to Ramallah in the West Bank, said the talks had been "diplomatic" rather than political.
For his part, Peres told reporters in Brussels that "hopes for peace are not dead. They remain alive. We have to continue to work."
Peres said he and Sharon were "crystalizing" a set of proposals designed to end the cycle of bloodshed.
But he added that the details were still being debated within Sharon's broad-based but right-leaning coalition government. Alluding to Arafat, Peres added, "For the moment, we don't have a partner who can fulfill promises."
Arafat has been under increasing pressure to arrest Palestinians attacking Israel in a bid to end Israeli occupation of swathes of Palestinian territory and Jewish settlements on their land.
A small demonstration by the High Committee for Nationalist and Islamic Forces on Tuesday protested against the arrests Palestinian police have carried out since the assassination of Israel's tourism minister three weeks ago.
The Palestinian Authority immediately condemned the killing of the tourism minister and arrested dozens of suspects in the days shortly thereafter.
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