In the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), two Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli
soldier at an industrial zone on the border that is a rare
example of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation amid conflict.
Israeli security personnel then shot the gunmen dead.
Witnesses in the West Bank village of Biddo said Israeli
forces opened fire in a confrontation with stone-throwers,
killing two Palestinians.
Hundreds of Palestinians took part in the protest over the
start of construction of a section of the barrier at Biddo, and
the demonstrations spread to two nearby villages.
Some of the protesters lay in front of Israeli bulldozers
preparing the ground for the barrier, which is being built
through villagers' fields.
"It was a very violent confrontation and six security
personnel were injured," a military source said. "To the best
of our knowledge our forces responded only with tear gas and
rubber bullets. We are investigating the reported fatalities."
The two men killed in Biddo were the first to die in
sporadic demonstrations in the past few months against the West
Bank barrier, a project Israel says keeps suicide bombers out
of its cities and which Palestinians call a land grab.
At the behest of the U.N. General Assembly, the
International Court of Justice held three days of hearings in
The Hague (news - web sites) this week into the legality of the barrier, which
snakes into Israeli-occupied land Palestinians want for a
state.
GAZA CLAIM
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, armed groups in Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) faction, claimed responsibility
for what they called a "martyrdom operation" at the Erez border
crossing in the Gaza Strip.
The early morning attack, which an Israeli security source
said wounded at least two other Israelis, coincided with the
first meetings in three years of Fatah's Revolutionary Council,
a key decision-making body, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Participants said possible dissolution of al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades -- which has been behind suicide bombings in Israel
that Palestinian leaders say harms a struggle for statehood --
could come up in a reform debate set for Thursday and Friday.
A statement from the brigades that blared through
loudspeakers in Gaza City called the Erez attack "a response to
the continued Zionist terrorism against our people and a
reaction to those who want to dismantle us."
But dismantling the brigades, made up of armed cells,
appeared unlikely, and some in Fatah believe the group bolsters
Arafat's mainstream movement against the power of Islamic
militant organizations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Revolutionary Council convened in a bid to head off
disintegration marked by mass resignations of rank-and-file
activists over alleged misrule by the dominant old guard and
armed anarchy in Palestinian streets.
(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Ramallah, Dan Williams
in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
