Israel Kills Master Bombmaker in Gaza Air Strike

05/12/2002| IslamWeb

Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a Palestinian Authority compound in Gaza City on Wednesday, killing a master bombmaker responsible for blowing up three Israeli tanks, witnesses and resistance activists said. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, spelled out tough conditions for the eventual creation of a provisional Palestinian state on territory already handed over to Palestinians under interim peace deals.

The Israeli air strike targeted Mustafa Sabah, 35, a guard at the compound. Palestinian sources said he was also a senior "engineer" for a resistance umbrella group behind a series of attacks on Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip.

Helicopters fired three missiles at the guard house Sabah was manning, blasting a hole through the concrete structure.

Reporters later saw his dismembered body being removed.

The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee said Sabah assembled the bombs that destroyed Israeli-made Merkava-3 tanks, a symbol of the Jewish state's military prowess, in three attacks carried out since February.

Seven tank crew members were killed. The occupation army modified the tanks to deal with the new threat.

"We promise the hero martyr that we will avenge every drop of his blood and that our response will come soon," the group, a coalition of factions waging a two-year-old uprising for independence, said in a statement issued in Gaza.

The Israeli occupation army said it carried out a "targeted strike to prevent further attacks," but declined to elaborate.

Since the start of the Palestinian revolt in September 2000, Israel has tracked down and killed scores of resistance activists it has accused of carrying out attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinians call it state-sponsored assassination and the practice has been condemned internationally. Israel says it is acting in self-defense.

INTERIM STATEHOOD?

Violence has surged in recent weeks, despite calls by the United States for calm in the region as it seeks Arab support for a possible war on Iraq.

Sharon reiterated that he accepted "in principle" President Bush's outline for peace and pledged to bring it up for approval by his government after the January 28 general election. Opinion polls show Sharon's rightist Likud widely favored to win.

The proposal Bush put forth in June calls for Palestinian reforms leading to the eventual creation of a state. It has evolved into a "roadmap" backed by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia calling for statehood by 2005.

Speaking to a conference near Tel Aviv, Sharon said he would be open to the creation of an "interim" state only after there is "an absolute end to terror" and new Palestinian leadership to replace President Yasser Arafa.

He said Israel would allow such a state in areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip already given over to full or partial Palestinian control under 1990s accords but that Israel would maintain a grip on "essential security areas."

"The Palestinian state will be demilitarized. It will be able to have police with light weapons. Israel will control the borders and airspace," Sharon said.

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said: "Sharon is repeating his ideas of a long-term interim solution on 40 percent of the West Bank and 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. This will not fly... The only road to peace is when Israel withdraws to the June 1967 borders."

BLOODSHED IN WEST BANK

In the West Bank on Wednesday, Israeli occupation soldiers shot dead two Palestinian resistance in a gun battle at their cave hideout near the city of Hebron.

Hundreds of Palestinians gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah for the burial a 95-year-old woman killed by an Israeli occupation soldier as she took a taxi home from a medical exam on Tuesday.

Israel has reoccupied Ramallah and most other major West Bank cities, sealing off their main entrances, since a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in the Jewish state.

After nightfall, fighting flared between rival Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip.

Activists from the Islamic group Hamas and Arafat's Fatah exchanged fire in a Gaza neighborhood after the members of one group tried to wipe out the other's slogans painted on walls, witnesses said. A 12-year-old boy and his father who were passing by were shot dead, hospital sources said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian security personnel check the rubble inside a small room in the Palestinian Authority compound in Gaza City on December 4, 2002. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)