The Israeli tanks fired three shells at the houses and blasted them with heavy machinegun fire

GAZA CITY, October 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli tanks killed eight Palestinians, including two children, on Thursday, October 17, when they blasted two houses in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah with shells and heavy machinegun fire.

The murdered children were a four-year-old girl and a 12-year-old child, Rafah hospital director Ali Mussa told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Among the dead were also two young men and two elderly women, Mussa said, adding that a dozen Palestinians were listed as seriously hurt.

The Israeli tanks fired three shells at the houses and blasted them with heavy machinegun fire, said Palestinian medical and security officials.

At least six people, most of them children, were killed last week in Rafah by Israeli forces during incursions into the Palestinian self-rule town on the Israel-controlled border with Egypt.

The Israeli occupation army abducted 10 Palestinians overnight in raids in the reoccupied West Bank, and abducted another following a shooting attack on an Israeli car, an Israeli military spokesman said Thursday.

Among the abducted were a member of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas abducted near Ramallah and nine other people abducted in the village of Tel, close to the northern city of Nablus.

Witnesses in Tel put the number of those abducted at only six, including four members of Fatah movement and two from the Islamic Jihad.

Following the overnight raids, the Israeli occupation army said troops abducted a Hamas fighter in the northern Jordan valley after he fired on an Israeli vehicle in the area during the early morning.

Palestinians have expressed disappointment with a meeting between Bush and Sharon

The gunman opened fire on a car with Israeli plates near the Bardala checkpoint 15 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of Jenin.

One bullet hit the car but no one was injured in the incident, an Israeli army spokesman said.

The fighter fled but was stopped by Israeli troops and found to be carrying an AK-47 rifle and a hand grenade, the army claimed. His name was not released.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said that there are some 7,200 Palestinians in Israeli jails, about half of them held for common criminal activities and the rest in connection with the two-year Palestinian Intifada.

Officials say about 17,000 Palestinians were jailed in the first Intifada that lasted between 1987 and 1994.

U.S. officials gave Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a “roadmap” aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within three years, with a Palestinian state declared next year, Israeli newspapers said Thursday October 17.

The dailies Yediot Aharonot and Maariv said the three-stage plan would begin with a halt to anti-Israeli attacks and the reform of the Palestinian Authority, coupled with the lifting of the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territories and an easing of the Palestinians' living conditions.

This should be completed by June 1 next year, after which a provisional Palestinian state would be declared following elections and an international conference on the Middle East.

Yediot said this phase would be complete by June 2004, while Maariv said by the end of 2003.

The last stage would be devoted to negotiations for a final resolution of the conflict, with the involvement of Arab countries among others.

The whole process should be wrapped up around the end of 2005 or beginning of 2006.

The plan is similar to the "roadmap" being drafted by the Middle East quartet committee, compromising the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.

Quartet diplomats are due to meet in Paris later this month to flesh out the plan, E.U. Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana told AFP last week.

"We are going to consider everyone's position on the 'roadmap' in detail. We have presented our position, the Americans have theirs, and I hope they will not be too different," Solana said, a day after returning from the torn region.

The quartet met in New York last month and adopted an EU "roadmap" for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

But the talks failed to reach anything more than an agreement on the general timing of interim steps, with the diplomats agreeing to go away and consider the proposals in greater detail.

Solana said he had discussed the E.U. plan with Sharon and that the Israeli leader had "accepted in principle the three-phase nature" of the proposals, while wanting to know more details.

"What we would like, is to reach a common position in the quartet on this detailed roadmap and then to talk together with other countries in the region," Solana said.

An Israeli official said in Washington Wednesday October 16, that Sharon had been given a project which Israel wanted to study.

He said U.S. envoy William Burns would be disclosing it during an upcoming tour of the Middle East.

U.S. President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he was sending Burns, Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, back to the region to help achieve "concrete, real, objective, measurable reforms" of the Palestinian Authority "so that there is a peaceful future for the region."

Separately, the State Department said Burns would visit 12 nations in the region over two weeks for talks on counter-terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq.

Burns' trip will include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.

The Palestinians expressed disappointment Thursday October 17, at a meeting between Sharon and Bush, saying the U.S. leader did not press Israel to withdraw from re-occupied territories.

"We were expecting President Bush to ask Sharon to implement U.N. Security Council resolution 1435 calling for an Israeli withdrawal from re-occupied Palestinian territories," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, top aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Resolution 1435, adopted late last month during an Israeli siege of Arafat's headquarters, demanded a prompt withdrawal of the Israeli forces from Palestinian cities and a return to the positions held before the Palestinian Intifada broke out in September 2000.

It also demanded that both sides cease all acts of violence.

At their meeting in Washington, Bush gave Sharon a green light to retaliate against any Iraqi attack on Israel, but there was little indication of U.S. pressure to ease the situation of the Palestinians.

"We never had such close relations with any president of the United States as we have with you. And we never had such a cooperation, in everything, as we have with the current administration," said a visibly pleased Sharon.

Bush said only that Sharon had pledged to "consider" paying 420 million dollars in tax refunds Israel owes the Palestinians, provided there is U.S.-led monitoring to ensure that none of the money goes to fund resistance groups.

Rudeina also complained that another meeting on Wednesday October 16, between Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the first since September 10, brought "no results".

"We tackled the issue in the meeting of improving the situation in the territories, responding to humanitarian needs and also ways of resuming negotiations," he told Israeli public radio.

As well as Erakat, Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad attended the talks in Occupied Jerusalem, a Palestinian official told AFP late Wednesday.

"The two delegations agreed to hold a big meeting early next week," said the official, who asked not to be named.

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