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Jordanian Diplomatic Car Under Israeli Fire, Palestinian Killed
AMMAN, Nov 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Jordanian diplomatic car came under Israeli fire Thursday near the Erez Crossing in the Gaza Strip, prompting Jordan to demand clarification from Israel, the official Petra news agency reported.
Israeli occupation troops opened fire on the diplomatic car carrying two administrative employees from the Jordanian representation office, the agency said in a dispatch from Gaza. No one was hurt in the attack.
It quoted the head of the Jordanian representation office, Jomaa Abbadi, as saying that he informed the Jordanian foreign ministry in Amman of the incident and that the ministry was following up on it.
Earlier in the day, Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian in a West Bank village, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
A source told the agency that the shooting happened during an Israeli search launched in Baqa al Sharqiyya on information that a Palestinian allegedly carrying explosives was preparing to carry out retaliatory attacks in the north of the Occupied Territories. Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in the incident.
A curfew was then imposed on the village by Israeli occupation forces immediately afterwards.
According to the Tel Aviv-based Ha'aretz newspaper, Israeli occupation forces beefed up their presence in towns along the Green Line border, particularly Hadera, Afula and Nahal Iron.
The Green Line marks the pre-1967, U.N.-delineated border of the Occupied Territories; as opposed to the present boundaries encompassing Palestinian land conquered and settled by Israelis after that date.
Despite Israel's pullout from Ramallah Wednesday, Israel still has crippling blockades on many Palestinian areas and the withdrawn tanks have been redeployed just outside the city, a major commercial hub north of occupied Jerusalem, AFP reported.
As Israeli tanks, jeeps and armored personnel carriers rolled out of the northern neighborhoods of Ramallah past several Palestinians, many stood in the heavy rain with one holding a sign with an arrow and the words: "Tel Aviv that way, and stay out."
Israel reoccupied several towns under Palestinian control after the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) killed an Israeli cabinet minister in retaliation for the assassination of its own leader, Abu Ali Mustapha.
Israeli occupation troops remain in two of six West Bank towns they reoccupied, despite international and U.S. condemnation of the invasions and American calls for "immediate" and unconditional withdrawal.
The U.S. has been putting intense pressure on both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in hopes of calming regional tensions that could impair its international campaign against Afghanistan.
In a sign that Palestinians are also under U.S. pressure, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has said he will not unilaterally declare an independent state when he addresses the U.N. General Assembly Sunday.
"The state has been declared in 1988 in Algiers. Are we going to declare it twice?" he told the Middle East Broadcasting Center in an interview.
Palestinians are currently engaged in a 13-month Intifada, the latest uprising against 53 years of Israeli military occupation.
Prominent Egyptian Muslim scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, in a speech delivered during the fourth meeting of the Jerusalem institution board of chairmen and trustees, said that U.S. and British claims of supporting the creation of a Palestinian state was misleading, and was only designed to quell the Intifada.
Israel has thus far defied international law in remaining in the Occupied Territories, as U.N. resolutions declaring that the Jewish state must withdraw from illegally occupied Palestinian land, including East Jerusalem, to its pre-1967 borders remain unfulfilled.
Al-Qaradawi insisted that resistance was the only solution by which Palestinians can gain freedom from Israeli occupation.
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