Israel has objected to a UN Security Council meeting scheduled for late Monday, where discussions are expected to cover Palestinian requests for international observers, even as the tally of those killed by Israeli occupation troops climbs toward 600, said AFP and reports.
Attacks against the Palestinians also continued Monday, with six Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Gaza, including three children.
The latest attacks boosted the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces to 558, including around 100 children.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman nevertheless told AFP: "We oppose the Palestinian [observers] proposal, which is designed to internationalize the conflict.
“It would cut across our efforts to bring about a ceasefire and get the Palestinians back to the negotiating table," he said.
“Instead of criticizing the victims of terrorism, the international community would do better to condemn the perpetrators," he said, referring to a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem restaurant 10 days ago that killed 15 people.
Israel is particularly opposed to intervention by the United Nations, where Israel's allies are far outnumbered by pro-Palestinian Arab states and their supporters, the Jerusalem Post said.
Colombian President Alfonso Valdivieso announced last Thursday that the Security Council was to meet to discuss the situation in the Middle East, saying the session might result in a resolution or announcement.
If a Security Council resolution is adopted by the UN Assembly it is binding on members. A presidential announcement is less restrictive.
Reports said that the US would prefer the second alternative, so as not to be obliged to veto a Security Council resolution.
The Group of Eight (G8) countries last month called for sending an observer force to watch over a ceasefire in the region.
However, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said two days ago that the monitoring force would be useless if there was no genuine desire to bring about a halt to “violence.”
AFP's latest death tally for the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 558 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
GERMAN FM IN REGION ON PEACE MISSION
Also on the diplomatic front, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was due in Cairo Monday to kick off a Middle East diplomatic mission centered on the Arab-Israeli conflict, said AFP.
Fischer, who was to meet Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher before heading on to Israel, is widely credited with securing a Palestinian ceasefire declaration during a June visit to the region which coincided with a massive suicide bombing on a Tel Aviv nightclub.
This time his trip comes amid a new upsurge in Israeli attacks on Palestinians, and the German Foreign Ministry said Fischer would be "working to achieve a peaceful settlement to the Middle East conflict" during his tour.
The minister has cut the trip from one week to three days to be able to concentrate on a hotly-debated and key imminent Parliament vote at home on sending German soldiers to join a NATO force which is to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia.
He has dropped previously scheduled visits to Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria, German government sources told AFP.
After meeting Maher, Fischer will go to Israel to meet Foreign Minister Shimon Peres later Monday, followed by talks Tuesday with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg, they said.
He was also due to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian territories before returning to Berlin by Thursday.
TWO BLOCKS OF PALESTINIAN FLATS DEMOLISHED IN OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM
On Monday, meanwhile, Israel’s Jerusalem municipality bulldozed two Arab-owned houses with ten apartments under construction Monday in the Beit Hanina area in the eastern part of the city.
The demolition was ordered on the pretext that the owners had no building permits, said Haaretz.
Palestinians say it is virtually impossible to obtain building permits in the traditionally Arab sector of the city, where Israel tries to limit Arab population growth.
One structure was a one-storey building with two housing units, while the second was a four-storey building with eight housing units. The two are among the largest buildings the municipality has demolished, said the paper.
Meir Margalit, a dovish member of the Jerusalem city council, was quoted as saying that 40 more Arab-owned homes in occupied east Jerusalem were under threat of demolition. Israel has said it is even-handed in enforcing building codes throughout the city.
The two structures were not inhabited and in the final stages of construction. Their demolition was carried out in relative quiet, except for a small demonstration that erupted after MK Ahmed Tibi (Arab Movement for Renewal) arrived at the site.
The European Union consulate is located near the demolition site, and said they would immediately send a report back to Geneva in order to issue a condemnation statement to Israel, said Haaretz.
OCCUPATION SOLDIERS BEAT PALESTINIAN
Also on Monday, Israeli border police severely beat a Palestinian man trying to enter Israel to work illegally.
The beating took place near a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Palestinian witnesses and medical workers said.
Witnesses said that as construction worker Jamil Ali Al Shahir, 30, was trying to cross through fields near the checkpoint with a group of other men, Israeli border police grabbed him by his hair and smashed his head against a rock, breaking his jaw.
Shahir, from the Bethlehem area, also suffered bleeding inside his ear, medical officials said, adding he was later transferred to Jerusalem.
SIX PALESTINIANS KILLED SUNDAY, INCLUDING THREE CHILDREN
Israeli occupation troops on Sunday killed six Palestinians, including three children, while wounding at least 12 others in separate incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources told AFP.
A Palestinian man, 30-year-old Falah Zidan, was shot dead late Sunday during an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops. Medical sources said he was hit by a bullet on the edge of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.
In the southern Gaza Strip near Rafah late Sunday, three Palestinians, including two children, were killed and nine others wounded by an Israeli missile attack, Palestinian security sources said.
The two children killed were an eight-year-old girl, Alaa, and her five-year-old brother Soleiman. The third victim was their 32-year-old father, Samir Abu El Az, said AFP and reports.
But according to Haaretz, Palestinian sources reported Sunday that the father was a member the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, identifying him as Samir Abu Zeid, and his daughter as Inas.
Haaretz quoted the sources as saying that they were killed Sunday around 11:00 pm by an explosion caused by two missiles fired by the Israeli army at his home. Nine other Palestinians were wounded, some of them seriously.
The Israeli army spokesman claimed that the three were killed by a Palestinian-fired mortar that missed its intended target - an army base next to Rafah - and landed on Abu Zeid's home.
"There was no assassination attempt in Rafah. The [Israeli army] did not fire missiles or shells in the city," military sources were quoted by Haaretz as saying Sunday.
Then Israeli sources claimed that the man was preparing a bomb that exploded and killed him and his two kids.
The killings triggered angry reactions from Palestinians, who consider it the first assassination operation targeting an activist and his family.
Israeli public radio reported that army positions in the sector, close to the Egyptian border, had been fired on.
Earlier Sunday in Rafah, Mohamed Abu Arar, 13, was shot when a group of Palestinian youths pelted Israeli troops with stones. He was hit in the chest with a live bullet when the soldiers opened fire, and died shortly afterwards in Rafah hospital.
Also on Sunday, 38-year-old Maen Abu Lawi was fatally wounded and three other Palestinians slightly injured when Israeli troops opened fire on the group as they tried to skirt round an Israeli roadblock south of Nablus.
The shooting occurred as a group of Palestinians, apparently frustrated by having to wait at an Israeli checkpoint inside the West Bank, walked through neighboring fields to avoid the control point.
The Israelis opened fire on them, hitting Abu Lawi in the neck, hospital officials said. He died later in Nablus hospital.
ISRAEL SAYS IT SEIZED ARMS SHIPMENT TO PALESTINIANS
Meanwhile, the Israeli army on Monday seized a Palestinian truck full of weapons and ammunition as it tried to cross from Israeli territory into the Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said.
The troops found the arms stash hidden under building materials in a truck driven by a Palestinian man from Ramallah in the West Bank.
The spokesman did not say what type of arms were found in the vehicle, which according to Israeli public radio was the second arms shipment to be intercepted in two months – Albawaba.com
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