GAZA CITY, 24 November 2002 — Israel pressed its offensive in the occupied territories yesterday rounding up around 40 Palestinians after an attack on an Israeli patrol boat left four sailors wounded.
The Islamic Jihad group said two of its members died when they blew up a tiny fishing vessel alongside an Israeli naval patrol boat off the Gaza coast.
Early yesterday, Jamal Ismail, 21, from the Maghazi refugee camp in southern Gaza, and Mohammad Al-Masri, 19, from the northern town of Beit Hanun, blew themselves up alongside an Israeli navy vessel, a high-ranking member of Jihad told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“The two martyr members of the Al-Quds Brigades (Islamic Jihad’s armed wing) blew up their boat near a Zionist boat off the northern Gaza coastline,” the official said.
The Israeli military said four sailors had been wounded in the attack, which occurred near the Jewish settlement of Dugit.
It said the fishing boat had been spotted moving toward Israeli waters, which are banned to Palestinian vessels. The Dabour, a small naval patrol boat, was sent to the area to investigate.
As it approached, sailors identified two “suspicious figures” on the boat and, “after several attempts to make contact, water was sprayed at the boat to force it out of the banned area.
“That had no effect. The patrol boat fired warning shots and after several minutes there was an explosion,” the statement said.
The statement did not say whether the Israeli shots had hit the boat or what happened to the two men on board.
Following the explosion, the army slapped a ban on all boat traffic along the Gaza Strip’s coast.
Meanwhile, the army entered the town of Qubatiyeh near Jenin searching for wanted Palestinians and demolished four homes in Bethlehem and the surrounding area, according to the army and an AFP correspondent.
In the village of Tekoa, the army demolished the home of Ryad Al-Amor, the head of the local armed wing of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, who was jailed by Israel for a series of attacks that left six people dead last spring.
The military also demolished the Bethlehem home of Ibrahim Mussa Abayat, the local head of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Fatah.
Israel expelled Abayat to Cyprus in May along with 12 other Palestinians as part of a deal to end a grueling siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, where Palestinians were trapped by Israeli soldiers for more than a month.
In the village of Al-Khader, the army demolished the home of Walid Sbeh, whom Israel accused of shooting attacks and helping prepare bombings.
