branch of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group, shortly after the Palestinian leader urged his people to "terrorize the enemy" in a controversial television address. Arafat’s comments on the 56th anniversary of the establishment of Israel followed other Israeli missile strikes against two leaders of the militant Islamic Jihad in Gaza City.
They were in apparent retaliation for the killing of 13 soldiers this week by Palestinian militants. Israeli military helicopters fired at least four missiles at a building housing the offices in Gaza City of Mohammed al-Hindi, the top leader of the Islamic Jihad in the area, the Voice of America (VOA) reported Saturday, May 15.
Nobody was apparently hurt in the attack and he safely fled before the strikes began, reports said. Islamic Jihad, which is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for a roadside bomb attack that killed at least 5 soldiers Wednesday, May 12, when their armored vehicle was hit by an explosion, as it traveled along the so-called Philadelphia route, near Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
SEARCHING FOR BODIES
A day earlier 6 other Israeli soldiers were killed in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City, where troops searched for weapons workshops. As troops moved out, an armored personnel carrier packed with explosives was torn apart by a roadside bomb. Other troops reportedly died when they tried to recover the remains of their comrades, whose bodies were ripped apart and spread across a wide area during the worst clashes in the region in recent memory.
Palestinian militants triumphantly displayed the remains of some of the killed soldiers in recent days. Al-Jazeera, the Arabic- language satellite TV channel, broadcast a video it said showed two masked Islamic Jihad activists taking responsibility and showing what they said was the head of an Israeli soldier in front of them. Israel TV reportedly rebroadcast the footage with the head electronically obscured.
But the losses of Israeli soldiers roughly equaled those of Palestinians. Medics said that in the Rafah refugee camp area, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, at least a dozen Palestinians, including children, were killed in recent days as angry troops searched for the remains of the killed troops.
TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION
Eyewitnesses said Israeli troops had left a trail of destruction in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City this week, blowing up homes and streets as they retreated following an Egypt brokered agreement to recover the body parts of soldiers killed in Tuesday’s bomb blast. Jewish law specifies that all body parts must be interred together at a funeral, and army officials said that army rabbinical authorities had been deployed to the area of the fighting, The Associated Press news agency reported.
However with Israeli counter attacks continuing an angry Arafat told television viewers from his Ramallah headquarters to "terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God." He stressed that "if they want peace, then let’s have peace." Although he added that Palestinians’ "hand is extended (to Israel) … to make this peace, the peace of the brave," his apparent selective quotation from the Quran was expected to outrage the Israeli government which has accused him of supporting terrorism.
Earlier Saturday sirens wailed throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip to signal three minutes of silence at noon local time. Reporters said thousands of Palestinians participated in marches throughout the areas with many holding large wooden keys symbolizing homes lost more than half a century ago after the State of Israel was founded in 1948.
HARD-LINERS
Hard-liners in the Likud Party of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, last week voted down his plan to withdraw troops from Gaza in a controversial referendum. Left-wing opposition politicians have suggested that soldiers are now fighting over an area "with no value to Israel", with opinion polls showing that most Israelis support Sharon’s
Gaza vision.
Palestinian officials remain skeptical however. The Palestinian Cabinet Minister for Negotiations Saeb Erekat appealed to the United States to put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to halt the demolitions and military operations in Gaza. He told VOA Saturday, May 15, that the Israeli army operations "contradict Mr. Sharon’s statements that he wants to withdraw Israeli soldiers" from the Gaza Strip.
"I think Mr. Sharon is doing on the ground precisely the opposite," he said. "He is engaging in Gaza. He is maintaining the occupation by demolishing the hundreds of homes, and [that is] resulting in a major human catastrophe." Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin, suggested that Israel does not want to withdraw from the Gaza Strip before it destroys what he described as the "flow of arms and explosives through a network of tunnels" into the area from Egypt.
MAJOR LIFELINE
"The major lifeline of Islamic Jihad and Hamas goes through this Philadelphia route underneath there," he said. "And we – if we didn’t stop it, then we would have had hundreds of Katyusha rockets and mortar fires launched against Israeli towns and villages across the border. " He also defended the demolition of buildings in the area, saying such measures are necessary, as long as Israeli forces in southern Gaza continue to come under attack.
In a desperate effort to revive peace, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday, May 15, urged the Palestinian prime minister to look at a proposed Israeli pullout from Gaza as a way to restart peace talks. "We have been given a new opportunity, and we hope to seize on that opportunity," Powell told reporters after an hour-long meeting in Jordan with the Palestinian leader, Ahmed Qureia.
Qureia did not address the Powell’s appeal directly, but Palestinian officials have suggest they want a clear time table for the establishment of a Palestinian state called for under the Western backed Roadmap for Peace.
