- JENIN, West Bank (Reuters)
- The Israeli army killed a senior Islamic Jihad militant on Saturday,
raising the specter of an upsurge in violence as a U.S. envoy prepared
to come to the region to counsel calm.
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- Iyad Sawalha was shot dead in a pre-dawn house-to-house
hunt in the West Bank city of Jenin, drawing new threats of revenge from
militants on the eve of a meeting of Palestinian factions to discuss halting
suicide attacks in Israel.
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- Palestinian sources said Sawalha, 28, was the head of
Islamic Jihad's military wing in the northern West Bank and atop Israel's
wanted list for allegedly planning suicide attacks that killed more than
30 people.
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- An Israeli military source said Sawalha was killed after
he threw grenades at troops who came to arrest him in Jenin. Palestinian
hospital officials confirmed his death.
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- Witnesses said scores of Israeli forces had entered Jenin,
some of them proceeding from house to house, breaking down walls and dynamiting
doors until they found Sawalha holed up with his wife in a cave dug under
one building. Soldiers called for him to surrender, but he only sent his
wife out of the house and then confronted the troops, they said.
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- Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has condemned recent
suicide bombings as terror acts damaging Palestinians' cause for statehood,
but he branded the killing of Sawalha a "crime" and Islamic Jihad
vowed Israel would suffer for it.
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- Such killings, which Israel describes as self-defense,
have typically been followed by intensified efforts of Palestinian militants
to slip into Israel to carry out suicide bombings. Slain militant commanders
have been quickly replaced by others.
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- "This operation and crime will not break our strength
and our resistance and our jihad will continue," Sheikh Abdallah Shami,
an Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip, told Reuters.
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- "The Islamic Jihad will respond to this crime and
our strike will be even more painful," he said.
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- ISLAMIC JIHAD, HAMAS SPEARHEAD ATTACKS
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- Islamic Jihad, along with Hamas, has been behind the
bulk of suicide and car bombings inside Israel since the uprising for Palestinian
independence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip flared two
years ago.
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- In October, the group claimed responsibility for an attack
on a commuter bus in northern Israel that killed 14 people. Israeli security
sources said Sawalha planned that bombing, as well as another attack in
June that killed 17 people.
-
- Seven Palestinians were taken to hospital with gunshot
wounds in the West Bank city of Nablus after throwing stones at Israeli
soldiers enforcing a curfew, medics said.
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- U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield
was due in the region on Monday to push a "roadmap" for peace
calling for Palestinian reforms and Israeli withdrawals from West Bank
cities reoccupied after a series of bombings.
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- In Cairo, officials from Arafat's Fatah faction and the
militant Islamic group Hamas were to meet to weigh how to reduce tensions
between them and call off suicide attacks in Israel.
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- The talks were set for Saturday, but a Fatah official
in the West Bank said they had been delayed to Sunday after Israel barred
a Fatah official from Gaza traveling to Cairo.
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- Hamas and Islamic Jihad have ignored previous calls by
the Palestinian Authority to cease suicide attacks, which have drawn international
censure, saying the bombings will end only when Israel stops killing Palestinian
civilians and militants alike.
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- On Friday, Palestinian officials said they would formally
respond to the U.S.-sponsored "roadmap" before Satterfield arrived.
But Israelis indicated their response would be delayed due to the collapse
of their coalition government.
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- Israeli government sources expected "very little
movement" on the plan until the right-wing Likud party of Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon chose a leader to run in a January election.
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- Sharon opted for a national ballot nine months early
after key coalition partner, the center-left Labour Party, bolted his 20-month-old
government in a spat over funding for Jewish settlements in territories
the Palestinians want for a state.
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- At least 1,651 Palestinians and 625 Israelis have been
killed since the uprising erupted in September 2000 after U.S.-brokered
negotiations on Palestinian statehood stalled.
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