Palestinian Resistance Bomber Kills Israeli

26/04/2001| IslamWeb

JERUSALEM (Islamweb & News Agencies) - A Palestinian Resistance bomber killed an Israeli Sunday, dealing a further blow to a fragile cease-fire as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to mend a rift with the United States by saying he regretted the dispute.
In the latest violence, Israeli police said, a Palestinian blew up himself and a local man at Kibbutz Shluhot, a collective internationally illegally farm three miles from the West Bank's Jordan Valley.
In the West Bank city of Tulkarm, about 1,000 Palestinians demonstrated over the arrest by Palestinian police of Abbas al-Sayed, spokesman for the Resistance group Hamas which has killed dozens of Israelis in Resistance attacks.
The Palestinian police also said three other activists were arrested, including Islamic Jihad activist Anas Shretih, in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Israeli analysts said the arrests may have been made after U.S. pressure on the Palestinian Authority to abide by the truce deal, which was reaffirmed by both sides on September 26 and includes a demand for militants to be jailed.
``If (Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is serious (about the cease-fire), he must first deal with arresting (militants) and preventing attacks,'' Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told reporters.
``If not, then we will do it ourselves.''
A series of Palestinian militant attacks on Israelis and Israeli raids into Palestinian areas have eroded the truce deal, which was reached last month under intense U.S. pressure.
Palestinian officials said Israeli tanks and bulldozers uprooted more than 2,500 acres of Gaza farmland in a reoccupied area near a Jewish settlement where Palestinian Resistance men killed two Israelis Tuesday before occupation soldiers shot the attackers dead.
Elsewhere, witnesses said Israel fired a burst of shells into southern Lebanon near the disputed Shebaa Farms border zone Sunday. There were no reports of casualties. The Israeli army denied shelling Lebanese territory and said it had held a live fire exercise nearby, inside Israel.
PHOTO CAPTION:
An Israeli tank which entered a Palestinian ruled part of the West Bank city of Hebron takes up a position in the Wadi Al-Hareyieh neighborhood in the West Bank city, October 7, 2001. Israeli troops remained in position in Palestinian-ruled areas of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Hebron, raids condemned by the Palestinians as a violation of the ceasefire deal. (Mahfouz Abu Turk/Reuters)