GAZA CITY, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -Israel attempted to kill a Palestinian Resistance leader early Friday and moved tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip, after its withdrawal from the Palestinian town of Beit Jala under international pressure boosted hopes for ceasefire talks. (Read photo caption below)
Israeli occupation troops fired anti-tank missiles at the home of Khayis Abu Leila, the head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) for the West Bank, a DLFP spokesman in Gaza City told AFP.
However, Abu Leila was not inside the house in Ramallah in the West Bank, said the spokesman, who called it a "new assassination attempt" under Israel's policy of "liquidating" intifadha activisits it brands as would- be Resistance bombers.
Abu Leila is the number two for the Damascus-based DFLP, which claimed a raid on an army outpost in the Gaza Strip last Saturday that left two Israeli occupation soldiers and a medic dead, as well as two Palestinian attackers.
It was the first infiltration of an Israeli military base since the Palestinians launched their uprising against Israeli occupation last September, and was viewed as a highly embarrassing blow to its image of military might.
INTIFADHA CONFRONTATIONS
At almost the same time Friday, Israel sent tanks and bulldozers into Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in just one of two incursions that appeared to have been suspended to build up trust ahead of an anticipated ceasefire meeting between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.(Read photo caption below)
The incursion sparked heavy exchanges of gunfire in the autonomous Palestinian section of Rafah, and two Palestinians were wounded, one badly, Palestinian security sources told AFP.
A Palestinian security position was destroyed and five houses were also damaged during the incursion, the sources said, which followed a smaller one in the central Gaza Strip near a crossing point into Israel.
Israeli tanks also fired shells at a Palestinian position in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Israeli settlement of Netzarim, late Thursday, killing a member of Arafat's Force 17, and wounding three other of the elite guards, one seriously.
The fresh confrontations come as a blow to efforts to get the peace process back on track, after Israeli public radio reported late Thursday that the Beit Jala ceasefire had paved the way for preparations for a meeting between Peres and Arafat aimed at winning a complete ceasefire.
Israel and the Palestinians reached an agreement Wednesday over Beit Jala after US Secretary of State Colin Powell and European countries exerted pressure to end the stand-off over the Palestinian town.
Israeli troops withdrew from the area early Thursday after some 50 hours following an agreement between Arafat and Peres that occupation soldiers would leave after the shooting at the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo stopped.
The meeting between Peres and Arafat could still take place as early as next week, Israeli radio reported, although no date or place has been fixed.
THE HIZBOLLAH FACTOR
Three other people were killed in the Palestinian territories on Thursday, amid new fears that Lebanon's Resistance Shiite Hezbollah movement could use the Palestinian uprising to launch a new offensive on the northern Israeli front
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Raanan Gissin, told AFP Thursday that Israel had "concrete information that Hezbollah is waiting on the opportune moment to carry out an attack".
Hezbollah fired four times earlier Thursday on Israeli warplanes overflying Lebanese air space -- an Israeli practice the United Nations slams as a violation of the UN-marked border between the two countries.
THE HEBRON FRONT
Palestinian doctor Musa Safi Kdemat, 50, was shot in the stomach as he rushed away from a battle between heavily armed occupation soldiers and poorly armed Palestinian Resistance men in the West Bank town of Hebron, Al-Khalil, Palestinian hospital sources said.
Palestinian police sources said the fighting broke out after Israeli occupation tanks entered into autonomous Palestinian territory in Hebron. They said 23 other people were injured in the fighting, one of them seriously.
The occupation army categorically denied moving into Hebron, but admitted firing tank shells at Abu Sneina, an Arab neighborhood in the heart of the city where 400 Jewish settlers live a turbulent existence among 120,000 Palestinians.
Up north, a Palestinian civilian, Daud Salah Sahmawi, 32, was killed by a bullet to the chest when clashes between poorly armed Palestinian Resistance men and heavily armed Israeli occupation soldiers erupted east of Tulkarem, hospital sources said.
PHOTO CAPTION:
An Israeli ooupation soldier rests on his tank near the internationally illegal Jewish settlement of Har Gilo after leaving the West Bank town of Beit Jala, early morning August 30, 2001. Israel withdrew its forces from Beit Jala early on Thursday after the Palestinian leadership was reported to have agreed to stop the firing at an Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause
- Aug 30 6:54 AM ET