Israeli Occupation troops Shoot Dead Palestinian in West Bank

11/12/2002| IslamWeb

Israeli occupation troops shot dead a Palestinian resistance man who tried to resist capture on Wednesday by running across the rooftops of a crowded refugee camp in the West Bank, the occupation army said.They said Osama Badra, 27, was killed by the occupation soldiers as he tried to flee above the narrow streets of the Balata refugee camp in the city of Nablus. Palestinian witnesses also said Badra had tried to resist arrest and was shot dead.

Both sides said Badra belonged to at least one resistance group which opposes peace moves with Israel.

The occupation army also said it had opened an investigation into the killing of a 25-year-old woman by occupation troops Monday as she took a taxi home at night in violation of a military curfew in Askar refugee camp in Nablus in the northern West Bank.

The almost daily deaths in Palestinian areas, and resistance attacks in Israel, have increased tension in the region in recent weeks despite the United States' calls for calm as it seeks Arab support for a possible war with Iraq.

Political tensions are also rising in Israel before a general election on January 28 which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his right-wing Likud party are widely expected to win.

In the latest sign of a swing to the right after more than two years of conflict, the center-left opposition Labor Party excluded Yossi Beilin, an architect of peace accords signed in 1993, from the top of its list of election candidates.

Beilin, 54, now has almost no chance of regaining his seat in parliament because seats will be allocated to candidates at the top of the list first. He is number 39 on the list and opinion polls suggest the party is likely to win only 20 seats.

OCCUPATION ARMY OPENS INVESTIGATION

At least 1,711 Palestinians and 668 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinians rose up to press for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000.

Badra hid on the roof of his house in Balata, where houses are packed side by side, when occupation troops came to arrest him and then ran from one roof to another. The occupation army said he ignored calls to halt and that occupation troops shot in the air before killing him.

The occupation army and local Palestinians said he was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Palestinians said Badra had recently also become active in the Islamic Jihad, a group which has claimed responsibility for resistance attacks which have killed scores of Israelis since the Palestinian uprising began.

The occupation army said it also arrested 11 suspected members of the Islamic Jihad and another 21 suspected Palestinian resistance men during the night.

The occupation army has reoccupied Palestinian cities in the West Bank in response to a wave of resistance bombings in June, and Israel has arrested hundreds of suspected resistance men.

The Palestinians say they are victims of collective punishment and say the occupation army's measures fuel violence.

The occupation army said it had opened an investigation into Monday's incident in which a woman was killed by occupation troops near Nablus. It said occupation troops had fired warning shots at the taxi carrying her after the driver ignored calls to halt.

Such shots are usually fired in the air and sometimes at car tires. But an occupation army spokesman said that "against regulations" the car was hit during the warning fire.

PHOTO CAPTION

Yossi Beilin(L), the former Israeli justice minister seen as one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, joins Palestinian information Minister Yasser Abed Rabo (R) at a Jerusalem meeting of the Israeli-Palestinian peace coalition in this August 18, 2002 file photo. After more than two years of Israeli-Palestinian violence, Beilin appears to have lost his bid to remain parliament after fairing very poorly in his Labour Party's ballot to chose candidates for January's general election. (Nir Elias/Reuter