Israel threatened yesterday to stop Palestinian fighters firing rockets from the Gaza Strip by using airstrikes and shelling to enforce a buffer zone inside the territory it abandoned three months ago. The makeshift rockets rarely cause casualties, but could have big political fallout as Ariel Sharon campaigns for re-election on the strength of a pullout from Gaza that he said would boost Israel's security.

Despite the withdrawal, the rocket firing has not stopped, and Israel has mounted air and artillery strikes on Gaza.

The fighters say the rockets are to avenge Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank as well as its strikes into the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, four Israeli soldiers were wounded when a rocket hit their base after Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in the West Bank. One rocket fell yesterday.

The Defence Ministry said the army had already been ordered to restrict movement within the belt along the border and security sources said that meant intensified air strikes.

But Sharon's office said the no-go zone was not yet being enforced.

Palestinians condemned the idea. Palestinian forces said they had refused an Israeli request to evacuate the border zone and were continuing their own efforts to prevent rocket firing from amid the rubble of former Jewish settlements at the border. The cross-border violence has quickly soured any hopes that the Gaza pullout could lead to a quick return to peacemaking.

The ruling Palestinian party Fatah is trying to clamp down on internal chaos and better its chances in January's crucial parliamentary elections by deciding to run on a single, united list.

Engulfed by rows between party veterans and an up-and-coming new guard campaigning for reform, in mid-December Fatah registered two rival lists to compete in the January 25 polls.

The split in a party that has dominated the Palestinian Authority for the last decade risked Fatah losing its parliamentary majority under a tough challenge from Hamas, which is contesting its first ever legislative polls.

In a bid to resolve the problem, Fatah's governing body decided at a meeting chaired by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas late to fuse the two lists into one, headed by the jailed intifada leader Marwan Barghouthi.

Former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie has decided to abandon his bid for a seat in parliament less than two weeks after resigning to contest.

They said Qurie had sent a letter to President Mahmoud Abbas to say that he wanted the elections postponed and that he opposed a plan to merge two rival lists of candidates from the ruling Fatah movement.

PHOTO CAPTION

Israeli soldiers from a mobile artillery unit stationed in Nahal Oz, just outside the northern Gaza Strip, December 22, 2005. (Reuters)