Israeli tanks on Thursday entered an area of the Gaza Strip under full Palestinian control “without any justification,” Palestinian police said.
Israeli tanks went several hundred meters into an area near the Muntar crossing point (known to Israelis as Karni), said the police in a statement carried by the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
“The incursion is a continuation of the occupation’s military escalation against the Palestinians,” said the statement.
In another incident, WAFA reported that Israeli troops arrested two Palestinians from the Houssan village in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
The two were identified as Mustafa Shousheh, 22, and Ismael Hamamrah, 27.
According to Israeli Army Radio, the two are suspected of throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli vehicles.
Witnesses told WAFA that the occupation troops transported the pair to a military camp near the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion, adjacent to the village.
PERES WARNS OF PALESTINIAN EXPLOSION AS RIFT WITH WEST DEEPENS
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres warned Thursday of simmering tensions reaching the breaking point in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to AFP.
Peres said the 10-month Israeli clampdown on travel in the Palestinian territories had to be eased as soon as possible to avoid a new wave of unrest.
"There are three million Palestinians who have lived under restrictions for 10 months, and we must understand this is a key problem which could explode in our face," said Peres, a day after touring crossing points between the Occupied Territories and Israel.
"We have to come up with an easing of restrictions for the Palestinians as soon as possible. The prime minister agrees, but implementing a move will take time since we do not have any creative solutions at the moment," Peres told Israeli public radio.
Israel claims that the restrictions are needed to prevent Palestinian bomb attacks on its citizens, but the United Nations says the lock-down is costing the Palestinians between seven and 10 million dollars a day and causing massive unemployment.
Meanwhile, the United States said Wednesday it would send a delegation to urge Israel and the Palestinians to tone down the "violence" in the Occupied Territories, amid fierce Arab criticism of the Bush administration's Middle East strategy, said reports.
Washington said, meanwhile, that Israeli assaults had not yet infringed on US laws on the use of American-made weapons, but again criticized Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of "targeted attacks" -- one of several euphemisms for assassinations -- on Palestinian militants, said AFP.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield is currently in Lebanon and will move on to Syria before he arrives in Israel, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
"His focus will remain on the issue of urging the parties to take the steps that are necessary to implement the Mitchell committee recommendations as quickly as possible," said Boucher.
Satterfield will be joined on his mission by other officials from Washington, State Department officials said, but no further details were available on his itinerary.
Earlier, in Ankara, Sharon told reporters that the US delegation would push for the adoption of a proposal by the Group of Eight (G8) nations to send international monitors to the Occupied Territories, Haaretz quoted him as saying.
But according to AFP, Boucher said only that the plan for monitors would be discussed as part of the drive to implement the Mitchell report -- a US-backed road map designed to lead the two sides away from confrontation, but one which fails to call for Israel to end its 34-year military occupation.
Sharon also told reporters that he had reiterated Israel's opposition to the idea of monitors in a call to US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday.
"I told him that Israel categorically rejects the sending of international observers," he said in Ankara.
State Department officials confirmed that the telephone call had taken place but would not divulge its contents.
The Palestinian side supports the proposal for monitors, who would oversee a truce between the two sides.
In recent days, US President George W. Bush's administration has faced harsh criticism from Egypt and the Palestinians over its role in the region.
Bush's team has been more reluctant than the administration of former US president Bill Clinton to plunge deep into Middle East "peacemaking."
But US officials insist they are "active" and point to previous missions by Satterfield and Powell and the daily contact made by US diplomats in the region.
Boucher on Wednesday again stated US opposition to "targeted assassinations" of suspected Palestinian militants by Israel.
But after Israeli attacks on Wednesday using US-made helicopters, reporters challenged him on whether US officials were looking at a US law which governs the use of US-made weapons sold to other nations, AFP said.
"We don't feel at this time that the facts have justified a determination under the Arms Export Control Act. At this point, we haven't made a determination, because we don't feel that that portion of our law has kicked in," he said.
The act states that US-made weapons may be used only for legitimate self-defense and internal security purposes and may not be passed on to third parties.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, AFP estimates that Palestinians have killed 128 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to AFP, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 540 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report issued early this year, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
