JERUSALEM, GAZA, BEIRUT (Islamweb & Agencies)- An Islamic Jihad Resistance activist, Mustafa Yassin, 28, was assassinated Monday night by an elite Israeli borderguard unit near the West Bank town of Jenin.He was suspected of having sent a Palestinian to carry out a bomb attack in northern Israel Sunday. Yassin's family told Reuters that Israeli occupation forces entered his house and shot him inside.
In Gaza, Israeli occupation soldiers killed a Palestinian teenager allegedly after stones were thrown at them in Rafah, along the border with Egypt. (Read photo caption below).
DANGEROUS TWIST:
In a dangerous twist to the Palestinian Resistance movement, Palestinians battled each other in night-time fighting in the Gaza Strip.About 20 Palestinian Resistance men, including members of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction and the Islamic group Hamas, shot at the Gaza City home of military intelligence chief Moussa Arafat, triggering a clash with his bodyguards on Monday.There were no immediate reports on injuries in the violence which erupted a day after Palestinian security forces shot and wounded three masked Palestinian Resistance men at a checkpoint in the Gaza Strip.
An official of the ``Popular Resistance Committees,'' a Fatah-dominated group that has spearheaded the anti-Israeli uprising, said Moussa Arafat's house was attacked because the Palestinian High Security Council had begun arresting Resistance activists.
At least five members of the resistance committees have been detained by security personnel of the Palestinian Authority, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
Palestinian Authority officials were not available to comment. But the Authority has said that since a cease-fire was brokered by U.S. CIA Director George Tenet last month, its forces had arrested seven Palestinians who violated the truce.
Israel, however, has said that Arafat has not done enough to detain Resistance activists who, it says, plan or carry out attacks against Israelis.
U.S. SAYS DISCUSSING BOOSTING NUMBER OF CIA MONITORSIn Washington, The United States said on Monday it was discussing with Israel and the Palestinians the possibility of increasing the number of CIA personnel assigned to help monitor the truce, but no decision has been made.
However, U.S. officials privately seemed to play down the possibility that such CIA personnel could fill the role of international monitors as called for last week by foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrial nations.
Israel publicly rejected any such deployment, although U.S. officials said Washington's ally might go along with an American monitoring presence.
Palestinians have appealed for international protection against the occupation army's disproportionate response to the uprising against occupation.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday that the international community needs to move ahead with plans for observers to help stem what he called 10 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.In Beirut, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, also called on Israel Monday to accept the observers.Solana said his organization was urging on both Israel and the Palestinians to implement a peace plan called for by a commission headed by former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell.
Solana, who was speaking in in the Lebanese capital, during a regional tour aimed at halting the Palestinian-Israeli violence, said the deployment of monitors would help implement the Mitchell plan. Solana also visited Syria where he conferred with President, Beshar Al-Assad.
The Mitchell plan calls for an end to violence in the region, a crackdown on Palestinian Resistance activists by the Palestinian Authority and a freeze on building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Palestinian doctors attempt to resuscitate 15-year old Palestinian, who was shot in Rafah in southern Gaza Strip, July 23, 2001. Witnesses said Nahal, who died later of wounds, was shot by Israeli army forces in Rafah refugee camp. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)