Israel invades Gaza town, killing Palestinian and destroying workshops and houses

<br>JERUSALEM (AP) _ Israeli tanks and troops swept through the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip early Friday, killing a Palestinian, damaging houses and blowing up suspected weapons factories, residents

Friday, September 13th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6



JERUSALEM (AP) _ Israeli tanks and troops swept through the town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip early Friday, killing a Palestinian, damaging houses and blowing up suspected weapons factories, residents and the military said.

Along with six metal workshops, 20 houses were badly damaged in the Israeli raid, Palestinians said, leaving families homeless. A gunman from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, was killed in a fierce gunbattle and six other people were injured, Palestinian doctors said.

Khalid Abdullah, 34, said his house was destroyed. ``I took my 5 children and my wife and we spent all night in the street,'' he said.

Palestinians said soldiers broke into the Fatah offices, destroyed equipment and caused considerable damage.

The Israeli military said soldiers blew up six workshops used to manufacture rockets and mortars. On Thursday night, a Qassam rocket hit a house in Saad, an Israeli village two miles from the Gaza border fence. The house was damaged, but the family was not at home and no one was hurt. The military said several Palestinians were detained.

Shortly after Israeli troops withdrew from Rafah at daybreak, a mortar shell exploded at a nearby Jewish settlement, Israel Radio reported. As they pulled back, an Israeli tank ran into an armored personnel carrier, lightly injuring eight soldiers, the military said.

Israeli forces were also on the move in two places in the West Bank.

Soldiers entered the town of Tubas in the northern part of the West Bank early Friday and were detaining terror suspects, the Israeli military said. Residents said the soldiers took over a building and made arrests.

In Tulkarem, residents said about 10 tanks entered the town, on the line between the West Bank and Israel, on Thursday evening. The Israeli military said only that some forces has been sent into Tulkarem and the curfew there re-imposed.

Tulkarem is one of six West Bank Palestinian cities and towns that have been under Israeli military control since mid-June, when Israel sent its army into communities following back-to-back suicide bombing attacks in Jerusalem.

Since then, the Israeli military has imposed curfews in the towns, confining hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their homes. The restrictions are usually lifted during the day in most places, except Nablus, which Israel considers a center of terrorist activity.

Incursions like the ones in Tulkarem and Tubas are common. Every night the Israeli military carries out raids on Palestinian towns and villages, afterward announcing arrests of suspected militants.

Palestinians charge that Israel is stalling implementation of an agreement that was to begin an Israeli pullout.

The agreement, announced Aug. 18 by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and his Palestinian counterpart, Interior Minister Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, designated the West Bank town of Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip as test cases. Israel would hand control back to the Palestinians, and if Palestinian security could prevent terror attacks, Israel pledged to ease its chokehold on the rest of the West Bank.

Israel withdrew its forces from Bethlehem on Aug. 20, but there has been no movement in Gaza. Israel charges that Palestinian security forces are not moving against militants there, pointing to daily mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli army positions, Jewish settlements in Gaza and Israeli villages just outside the fence.

Israel sent tanks and troops into Gaza three times earlier this week, briefly encircling refugee camps and towns, making arrests and destroying houses.

On the ninth anniversary of the signing of the first interim peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, a poll published Friday showed that Israeli voters agree with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's discontent toward Arafat and the interim peace accords with the Palestinians.

Like Sharon, 80 percent of the respondents felt that Arafat is irrelevant, and 79 percent said that the interim accords are no longer in force. Sharon has stopped short of saying that the agreements have been canceled, but said this week that they are virtually dead because of Palestinian violations.

The Palestinians blame Israel for erosion of the accords, meant as a step-by-step process toward a peace treaty. The first Israel-Palestinian accord was signed on the White House lawn on Sept. 13, 1993.

The survey by the Market Watch polling agency was published in the Maariv newspaper. It questioned 590 Israeli adults and cited a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
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