Israeli occupation troops killed two Palestinians, one of them a policeman, in clashes with resistance activists during a pre-dawn raid into a Gaza neighborhood on Monday, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said More than 30 tanks and other occupation army vehicles rumbled into the Twam neighborhood north of Gaza City where occupation troops demolished the home of a member of the resistance group Hamas, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said.

During the raid, Palestinian resistance men sporadically exchanged fire with the Israeli occupation troops. A Palestinian policeman and a civilian were killed in the clashes, and four others were wounded, Palestinian security sources said.

Israel's occupation army has carried out near-daily raids into the Gaza Strip in recent months to demolish Palestinian homes or arrest suspected resistance activists waging a 28-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.

Hamas has led a campaign of resistance bombings inside Israel during the uprising, but has also attacked heavily guarded Jewish settlements in Gaza.

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the occupation army would deal a heavy blow to Hamas after the group claimed responsibility for a land mine, which killed the four-member crew of an Israeli tank in northern Gaza at the weekend.

Hours later, six Hamas activists were killed in an explosion near Gaza City while inspecting a small remote-control glider which the group said it obtained for use in new "operations."

Hamas officials said they believed Israel had booby-trapped the device and vowed to avenge the deaths.

Israel authorizes immigration of 20,000 more Ethiopians

The Israeli government has meanwhile authorized the immigration of another 20,000 Ethiopians of Jewish origin, an interior ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

"The government unanimously decided on this question after a proposal was made by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, and a ministerial committee which he will chair will be set up to implement the decision," spokeswoman Tova Ellinson said.

The decision gives the green light to 17,000 members of the Falash Mora community -- Ethiopian Jews forced to convert to Christianity in the 19th century -- and 3,000 so-called Falashas, or Ethiopian Jews living in the interior of the African state, she said.

Interior ministry and rabbinical officials were to set off soon for Ethiopia to organize the immigration, she added.

On January 12, some 3,000 Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office to urge the government to allow their relatives to join them, even if their Jewishness was not totally confirmed.

The demonstrators said they were "victims of discrimination" and chanted "Mum and Dad," as they waved pictures of relatives left behind in Ethiopia.

Around 17,000 of the Ethiopians hoping to move to Israel and claiming Jewish descent are based in the capital Addis Ababa and in the northwestern province of Gondar.

They insist on their "right of return," an Israeli law which allows Jews from anywhere in the world to obtain automatic Israeli citizenship.

But the Ethiopians' link to the Jewish faith has been the subject of heated debate between political and religious officials for years; with the latter demanding they officially convert.

The Ethiopian Jews lived for centuries in isolation from other Jewish communities in the diaspora.
Israeli religious authorities were slow to recognize the Ethiopians as Jews and it was only in 1984, and then in 1991, that the Jewish state organized massive air lifts for around 80,000 Ethiopians, many of whom ended up living in the occupied West Bank.
Despite massive government aid, the Ethiopian community has had to overcome an enormous cultural barrier in Israel and other obstacles.

It suffers in particular from a high rate of unemployment and from racial prejudice.

In 2000, Israel accepted 2,246 immigrants from Ethiopia, in 2001, 3,298 and in 2002, 2,693, according to official figures.

In mid-January the Arab League accused Israel of planning to welcome 20,000 additional Ethiopian Jews and put them in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which have been the main focus of the 28-month Palestinian uprising.

Many settlers have left their homes because of the rising violence, while the Israeli right sees the settlements as strategically important to maintain a presence in the territories which they say are part of Israel's Biblical heritage.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian doctors and medical workers wheel in the body of a Palestinian policeman Khalil el Bakri to the treatment room at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Monday, Feb. 17, 2003. (AP Photo/Adel