GAZA CITY, 15 July — At least 10 Palestinians were injured yesterday when two Israeli F-16 warplanes, supported by helicopters, flattened a three-story house and damaged others near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Helicopters and the warplanes fired rockets at the buildings.
One Palestinian witness said two US-made Apache helicopters fired one rocket apiece at a building used by Palestinian police, who had evacuated the area shortly before the strike.
The same witness said an F-16 warplane fired a rocket at another house nearby, destroying the building.
At least 10 people were wounded in what some witnesses said was an attack on the home of Youssef Abed Al-Wahab, a leader of the Hamas group in southern Gaza.
The witnesses said Wahab bolted from the house near the town of Khan Younis immediately after hearing the sound of aircraft. The home was destroyed and four nearby buildings were damaged.
A young Palestinian man was killed by Israeli Army gunfire near the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security and hospital sources said.
Nidal Al-Amudi, 27, from nearby Beit Lahia, was shot in the head, officials at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City said.
In the West Bank, a 19-year-old Palestinian Ghazi Abu Ebayya was shot dead by Israeli troops when they entered the Balata refugee and in Gaza, a Palestinian, angered by the killing of three relatives in an Israeli airstrike burst into a courtroom yesterday and shot dead a man on trial for allegedly betraying the trio, witnesses said. (See Page 5)
In another development, Israel yesterday agreed to fresh discussions with the Palestinians “in the coming days,” moving to head off a new feud between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
The two men met yesterday, a day after Sharon scuttled a scheduled round of talks between Peres and a delegation from President Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority that was due to focus on humanitarian issues.
“It was agreed that a meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian teams will be held in the coming days,” said a statement issued by Sharon’s office.
In Jerusalem yesterday, Sharon’s Cabinet withdrew its support from a controversial private member’s bill to bar Israeli-Arab citizens from buying homes in new communities built for Jews on publicly-owned land.
Ministers, who had endorsed the bill a week earlier, voted 22-2 to bury it in committee. The measure, which was denounced by past and present justice ministers as racist, was designed to circumvent a Supreme Court ruling that such discrimination was unconstitutional.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said in Cairo yesterday the Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi foreign ministers are to hold talks with US President George W. Bush to press him for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories.
The meeting with Bush, set for sometime later this week, will follow a gathering of officials from the Middle East quartet — the United Nations, United States, Russia and European Union — scheduled for tomorrow in New York. “Bush will examine the latest developments with the Arab ministers, knowing that our goal is to end the deteriorating situation, to obtain an Israeli withdrawal (from reoccupied Palestinian areas) and to contribute to the creation of a Palestinian state,” Maher told reporters before heading to New York.
Maher, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher, and a representative of Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal are to hold talks with leading officials from the quartet at tomorrow’s gathering. Saud is then to join them for a meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell set for Thursday in Washington.
Egyptian officials confirmed yesterday President Hosni Mubarak is set to meet separately today with Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
In yet another development, Sharon has called off planned talks between his Cabinet chief, Dov Weisglass and Powell, his office said yesterday.
It said the meeting, which would have preceded tomorrow’s gathering in New York of top officials from the Middle East quartet had been canceled because of Powell’s busy schedule.
Meanwhile, Israel was back on high alert yesterday, fearing new attacks after thwarting two bomb plots and postponing the latest bid to rekindle its dialogue with the Palestinians.
Police said the move to step up security patrols came after foiling two Palestinian attempts to penetrate Israel with explosives and renew deadly attacks which have died down in the past four weeks.
Israeli military sources said yesterday that border guards captured a Palestinian in the northwestern West Bank near the Green Line with Israel after he opened fire on a patrol. (The Independent)
