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Israel Strikes Gaza, Assassinates Palestinian Activist
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Palestinians look at the damaged car of Mahmud El-Arqan after it was hit by Israeli missiles. (Reuters)
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GAZA
CITY, December 8, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Israeli
aircraft early Thursday, December 8, launched a raid on the north of the
Gaza Strip, hours after one Palestinian was killed and ten others were
injured, including three children younger than 10, in an air strike on
the Strip.
Israeli
artillery also fired shells at the north of the Gaza Strip after a
rocket exploded near Erez, the main crossing point from the strip into
Israel, without claiming any victims, a military spokeswoman announced,
according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Mahmud
El-Arqan, 29, of the Popular Resistance Committees, was killed Wednesday
when an Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at his car in the Gaza town
of Rafah, Reuters reported.
Witnesses
said the missiles struck the car as it rounded a bend on a road in the
southern Gaza border town of Rafah.
Medics
said 10 other people were wounded in the attack, among them three
children younger than 10, by shrapnel from the vehicle.
Israeli
military sources claimed that El-Arqan was targeted for having
collaborated with Islamic Jihad in a series of recent attacks on Israeli
troops and in weapons smuggling into Gaza.
A
spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, Abu Abir, said that the
movement would avenge Arqan's death.
The
strikes come after Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz gave the green
light to the resumption of the controversial extra-judicial
assassinations of Palestinian activists following the bombing at the
mall in Netanya which killed five Israelis. The bombing was claimed by
the Islamic Jihad.
Israeli
media said Israel had opted for assassination strikes targeting
Palestinian activists after the bombing rather than a large-scale raid
that could escalate the fighting.
Israel
has assassinated Palestinian resistance leaders in the past by air
strikes on their vehicles.
Condemnation
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10 more people, including three children, were wounded. (Reuters)
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The
Palestinian Authority strongly condemned Wednesday attack, saying the
Israeli crime was part of the escalation against the Palestinian people.
Chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat described the attack as a "crime
which is part of a framework of an Israeli escalation," according
to AFP.
Nabil
Abu Rudeineh, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman, said the
assassination was "dangerous ... harmful to the peace process and
harmful to the Arab and International efforts exerted to maintain
calm," Reuters said.
He
said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had telephoned Abbas asking
him "to seek to maintain calm and self-restraint and to maintain
the peace process."
The
latest death brought the overall toll since the start of the Palestinian
uprising in September 2000 to 4,899. More than three-quarters of the
victims have been Palestinian, according to AFP tally.
Israel
has launched several offensives over the past two months in the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank targeting resistance elements.
The
Palestinian resistance factions have been observing a de facto truce
since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was elected in January, an
agreement that was cemented at talks brokered by Egypt last March.
The
shaky truce has repeatedly been put to the test by Israeli
assassinations of resistance activists and incessant attacks.
The
"cooling down" period was broken in September when Israel
assassinated three Islamic Jihad leaders, prompting the resistance
movement to fire a salvo of rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot.
Adding
insult to injury, Israel assassinated three days later two Hamas members
in a deadly air strike in Al-Zaitoun district to the south of the Strip,
prompting retaliation threats from Hamas.
Israel
Freezes Talks
Within
the context of escalation, Israel has also frozen negotiations about
setting up a bus service which would have enabled thousands of
Palestinians to travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank from next
week, officials said Thursday.
"There
will be no discussions about these convoys as long as the Palestinian
Authority fails to respect its commitments to fight against
terrorism," a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said,
according to AFP.
The
decision to suspend the talks was made by the security cabinet Tuesday,
the day after the bombing at the entrance to a shopping mall, the
spokesman added.
Under
the terms of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement brokered by Rice last
month which led to the reopening of the border between Gaza and Egypt, a
bus link should have begun operating on December 15.
Israel
should also allow convoys of trucks to travel between Gaza and the West
Bank from January 15 as part of the agreement.
A
senior security official quoted by the Haaretz daily also
attributed the decision to halt the negotiations to Israeli concerns
about the monitoring of travelers crossing the Rafah border between Gaza
and Egypt since it reopened late last month, alleging that "hostile
elements" had entered the territory.
The
situation was expected to come under discussion when David Welch, one of
Rice's top lieutenants at the State Department, meets with officials
from both sides from Thursday.
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