Jamal Zabara, one of five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces Monday

GAZA CITY, December 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian man was shot dead early Tuesday, December 31, by Israeli occupation forces overnight in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll from a day of heavy clampdown on the Palestinians to five, as the year ended on a much less hopeful note than it began.

The latest victim, Hassan Abu-Said, aged 40, was killed by Israeli gunfire from a Jewish settlement near Khan Yunis, Palestinian security sources said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Earlier Monday, December 30, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian resistance activist, disguised as an Israeli soldier, on the Gaza-Israel border, while in the West Bank they killed three civilians, including one apparently beaten to death in Al-Khalil (Hebron), said AFP. 

Two other people were injured, one critically, in the clashes in the city center, which like the rest of the West Bank was reoccupied by Israel six months ago.

In the southern West Bank, Israeli forces also destroyed the homes of two Palestinian college students who gunned down four Israelis at the nearby colonial settlement of Otniel Friday, December 27.  

The latest deaths bring the toll since the start of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000 to more than 2,800 people, most of them Palestinians. 

The year 2002, ending in all too familiar bloodshed, had begun amid hopes of a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process.

On January 1, U.S. officials said that Washington's special envoy Anothony Zinni was returning to the region, while the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said it was signing up to his truce call.

There had been a clear decrease in violence in the Palestinian territories since an appeal for calm from Arafat.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces destroyed the homes of two Palestinian college students

That was in the days when people were still talking about the Tenet and Mitchell plans, internationally approved schemes to defuse the violence and open the door to political negotiations.

However, after a year of deadly Israeli army incursions in formerly Palestinian-ruled areas and Palestinian retaliatory bombings in Israeli areas, the crisis shows no signs of abating.

The spiritual leader of the resistance Islamic movement Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said Monday, December 30, that halting resistance bomb attacks would only serve the interests of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in next month's general elections.

"The end of martyr operations would serve the interests of the Zionist right-wing and allow the terrorist Sharon to tell voters... he had been able to make the operations stop and to guarantee their security," Yassin told a website close to Hamas.

Yassin insisted retaliatory martyr attacks "will carry on" and Israel "will have no security as long as the Palestinian people are subjected to occupation."

There are still some people opposed to the fighting, not always from the most obvious quarters.

Meanwhile, in occupied Jerusalem, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected Monday an appeal by eight Israeli army reserve officers refusing to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because the 35-year occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal.

The court's three judges argued that "selective conscientious objection cannot be recognized because it could weaken the ties that bind us as a nation."

The officers, most of whom have served jail terms for their beliefs, hoped to make a landmark case out of their appeal, in effect putting the occupation on trial.

On the political front, meanwhile, Sharon trained his sights on members of his own party caught up in a vote-rigging scandal, reportedly threatening to sack one deputy minister.

Sharon moved to limit political fall-out from a corruption scandal dogging his dominant Likud party, which has already affected his huge lead in opinion polls ahead of January 28 elections. 

Press reports said Monday Sharon aims to sack Deputy Infrastructure Minister Naomi Blumenthal after she refused to answer police questions about accusations of having paid hotel bills of Likud central committee members in return for their support in internal elections.

Israeli army reserve soldier Lt. David Zonshein (R) and his lawyer read the Court’s rejection of the appeal not to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip

Likud members who failed to be selected as candidates for parliament in the party's polls this month have accused central committee members of taking bribes in return for their votes to secure others a place on the electoral list.

Opinion polls suggest that though the party is still far ahead of Labor Party, it can now count on taking only some 35 seats in the 120-seat parliament, against 40 at the start of the campaign.

Meanwhile, Israel's Central Elections Committee also barred a leading Arab-Israeli MP and former advisor to President Arafat from running in the elections.

Ahmed Tibi was stripped of his right to stand in the polls because he allegedly "supported terrorist organizations which commit anti-Israeli attacks," committee sources said. 

Tibi, for his part, called the ruling a "black day" for Israeli democracy and intends to appeal the decision to the High Court, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, reported.

The Tibi ruling was the second decision made by the committee against the opinion of CEC chairman Justice Mishael Cheshin, who called on committee members not to disqualify Tibi's candidacy, despite the fact, Cheshin said, that "he often treads a very dangerous tightrope".

Cheshin called the disqualification "a bad and incorrect decision."

Labor MK Shimon Peres also slammed the ruling, telling Army Radio Tuesday the committee's decision was "the wrong one."

The panel's decision to disqualify Tibi also contradicted the recommendation made by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein. The High Court will have to decide on the matter by January 9. 

"This is a black day for democracy, and a slap in the face of the Arab minority in the state of Israel, and of all those who seek to build a different sort of relationship between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority," Tibi said in remarks broadcast Tuesday.