OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, December 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel on
Saturday, December 21 hailed its U.S. ally for blocking an international
peace plan for the Middle East, as an 11-year-old Palestinian girl was
shot and killed walking home from school in the Gaza Strip.
Hanin
Abu Sitta was hit in the back by a bullet in the southern Gaza town of
Rafah and died later in the hospital, Palestinian medical sources said.
However,
Israeli media claimed she was struck down during a gun battle between
troops and “militants” in the flashpoint town, notorious for its
arms smugglers who smuggle weapons across the border from Egypt to
Palestinian resistance groups, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
An
Israeli army spokesman had no immediate comment on the death which
brought the toll from more than two years of the Palestinian intifada
against Israeli occupation to 2,781, including 2,051 Palestinians - most
of them women and children - and 681 Israelis.
U.S.
Blocks “Quartet” Peace Plan
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Hanin’s
father carries her body
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While
the violence flared, Israel and the Palestinians were again at odds over
U.S. policies in the Middle East after Washington blocked the diplomatic
“quartet” from immediately adopting a peace initiative.
Officials
from the European Union, the United Nations and Russia on Friday heeded
calls from fellow-quartet member Washington to postpone adoption of the
peace plan until after Israeli national elections on January 28.
The
quartet had been widely expected to finalize the plan, which calls for a
Palestinian state by 2005 and guarantees for Israeli security, at a
meeting Friday in Washington.
Though
rebuffed, the E.U.’s representatives at the meeting refused to admit
they were dismayed and took comfort that U.S. President George W. Bush
had not backed away from what aides say is his “vision” for a
Palestinian state.
“I
do not say whether I’m disappointed,” Danish Foreign Minister Per
Stig Moeller, representing the current European Union Presidency, told
reporters Friday, December 20, after emerging from the White House.
“The
message from the president of the United States is very clear, he is
dedicated to the two-state solution,” he said.
In
occupied Jerusalem, however, a diplomatic advisor to Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon noted satisfaction with the U.S. stance.
“The
U.S. position is logical because a roadmap would have no meaning without
Israeli support,” Zalman Shoval said Saturday, adding that new peace
moves would have to be delayed until “several weeks” after the
January 28 elections to let a new government to be formed.
Sharon’s
right-wing caretaker government had strongly opposed several aspects of
the “roadmap”, particularly a proposed freeze on the building of new
Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
Palestinians:
U.S. is Sharon’s Agent
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Palestinians
ride on a horse cart in the sea as they go around a road block
near Gaza city Saturday
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For
their part, the Palestinians reacted angrily to the news. Top negotiator
Saeb Erakat blasted the United States for both stalling on the quartet
initiative and vetoing a Syrian-sponsored U.N. Security Council
resolution critical of Israel.
“These
actions show clearly the (U.S.) administration has transformed itself
into the electoral agent of Ariel Sharon,” Erakat told AFP.
The
Syrian-sponsored resolution put to the vote in the council Friday
expressed “grave concern at the killing by the Israeli occupying
forces of several United Nations employees,” including a Briton killed
in a West Bank refugee camp on November 22.
Israel
has come under heavy criticism for the deaths of at least five U.N.
workers struck down in the midst of military operations in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip.
A
full 12 of the 15 members of the Security Council - including the other
four veto-wielding permanent members, Britain, China, France and Russia
- all supported the resolution. Bulgaria and Cameroon abstained.
“The
Palestinian authority denounces this veto, that will allow Israel to
continue to violate international resolutions, Palestinian human rights
and the rights of international employees,” Erakat said.
Gaza
Dissection, Home Demolitions
On
the ground, Israeli occupation army troops erected roadblocks, cutting
the Gaza Strip into three sectors and barring all Palestinian traffic
from using the territory’s main north-south highway Saturday.
The
Israeli army also made a new incursion into the central Gaza Strip city
of Deir el-Balah, demolishing two homes and arresting two Palestinian
suspected of membership in the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, Israeli
and Palestinian sources said.
The
army said the barriers were put on the highway near Deir el-Balah and
further north near the illegal Jewish settlement of Netzarim “for
security reasons”, after the murder Friday of a Jewish settler in an
ambush claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
