Israeli forces destroyed early Tuesday the homes of two Palestinians who had been involved in attacks against Israel. One was a resident of a Palestinian village near Hebron. He was responsible for the shooting attack in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba that occurred earlier this year.
The second home was destroyed in Bethlehem. It was the house of a Palestinian who carried out the bombing attack in Rishon Letzion three months ago.
Expulsion
An Israeli military court approved the expulsion of three Palestinian relatives of bombers from the West Bank to Gaza, Israel TV reported Monday night. Human rights activists said they would appeal the decision to a civilian court.
The expulsions would be the first of their kind and a new Israeli tactic aimed at discouraging Palestinians from carrying out attacks.
The three Palestinians facing expulsion are Intisar and Kifah Ajouri, sister and brother of Ali Ajouri, who is accused of handing belts with explosives over to suicide bombers, and Abdel Nasser Asidi, brother of a Hamas activist who is suspected of killing several Israelis.
The three Palestinians would have 12 hours to appeal the decision to an Israeli civilian court. The deportations were apparently postponed last month, after there was severe international criticism of the plan.
Dalia Kerstein of the Israeli human rights group Moked said the expulsion would not be implemented until 2 P.M. (11:00 GMT) on Tuesday, giving time for an appeal. Moked, which mounted the trio's appeals against the original expulsion orders, slammed the new ruling as a "collective punishment contrary to international law and natural rights."
Truce talks
Palestinian political factions rejected a call for an end to attacks on Israeli civilians. Instead, the unity meeting endorsed the Palestinians' two-year-old uprising Israel. "We stress the legitimacy of our resistance against the (Israeli) aggression and the occupation, and the Israeli settlements," said the latest draft from the meeting, obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
The political factions met in Gaza City to establish unified positions in preparation for elections in January and other planned changes. The factions say they want to create a "national unity leadership" that would include all major groups —Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Fatah movement was the driving force behind the current meetings, and it offered a draft proposal that called for an end to attacks against civilians inside Israel. "The idea in this initiative is to stop attacking civilians and limit the resistance" to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, said Kadoura Fares, a member of parliament from Fatah.
The proposed call for ending attacks on civilians was dropped because some groups opposed it. The draft now under consideration says, "the uprising and resistance and political work are all means practiced by our people to achieve our national goals."
"The manifesto stresses the legitimacy of all sorts of resistance. It does not exclude anything," Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Jamil Majdalawi said. "The soldier who attacks me here, I must attack him there (in Israel)," Hamas' spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin told Reuters at his home in Gaza City.
The factions have agreed to the draft in principle, though Hamas was still consulting its leadership before formalizing its acceptance. Hamas also said it had doubts about whether Arafat would follow through with planned elections. "We do not know if Arafat is serious about elections," said Ismail Abu Shanab, a leading Hamas official. "He speaks about elections, but when you talk about a serious process, he postpones elections."
If all factions agree to the proposal, the Palestinians would establish a national unity leadership, with members from all parties. Hamas' inclusion in a Palestinian leadership is vigorously opposed by Israel.
"Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and all talks between them and the Palestinian Authority until now have come to nothing," said Mark Sofer, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. "As long as terror exists, you cannot move forward meaningfully with the Palestinians on any major issue," he was quoted as saying by AP.
For its part, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, distributed a pamphlet Monday night listing several conditions for halting attacks against Israel. These conditions include: Release of all Palestinian prisoners from jails in Israel; Stopping the policy of assassinating senior members of Fatah and other activists; Recognition of Arafat as legitimate and exclusive representative of the Palestinian people; Rejection of all external interference in the territories or in the Palestinian leadership. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
