Israel kills Palestinian militant as raids escalate

By Atef Sa’ad

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) – Israeli troops killed a local
commander of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and bombed a bridge
in Gaza on Tuesday in escalating raids against Palestinian
militants, security sources said.

The latest casualty brought to eight the number of
Palestinian gunmen killed by Israel in air strikes and
shootings since Sunday when an Israeli woman was killed in a
stabbing attack in central Israel.

The wave of violence follows Hamas’s landslide victory in a
January 25 Palestinian legislative election, a development that
further strained already deadlocked peace efforts.

The Islamist militant group Hamas refuses to recognize
Israel and has carried out dozens of suicide bombings against
the Jewish state in a 5-year-old uprising.

Palestinian security sources said Israeli troops killed a
senior commander of Islamic Jihad, Ahmed Radad, during an early
morning raid in the West Bank’s largest town of Nablus.

Radad, 28, was from another West Bank village and had been
hiding in Nablus during his flight from Israeli troops for the
past few years, the Palestinian sources said.

Islamic Jihad had claimed responsibility for rocket fire
from Gaza that wounded three Israelis at the weekend and a
series of recent suicide bombings against Israel.

Israel’s army spokesman said two soldiers were wounded in
the Nablus raid, as a gunbattle erupted while the troops
attempted to arrest a militant hiding in a building.

As that raid ensued, Israel pounded northern Gaza with
artillery fire and its air force bombed a bridge and six roads
to prevent rocket fire.

One shell hit a home in northern Gaza, injuring a
15-year-old girl, medics and witnesses.

Israel said its troops also arrested four suspected
militants in a village near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Hours before Tuesday’s violence, Israel killed two members
of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, in an air strike in
Gaza on Monday.

A day earlier, Israel killed five other Palestinian
militants, including a top Islamic Jihad bombmaker, in two
separate air raids in Gaza.

PEACE ACCORDS

Despite the stepped up attacks on militants, Israel’s
Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he hoped to
maintain ties with Abbas, who has vowed to stick to peace
accords with Israel, despite Hamas’s election win.

Olmert has threatened unilateral moves in the absence of a
peace partner, after the popularity in Israel of its withdrawal
last year from the Gaza Strip, which was also a unilateral
step.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was quoted by an Israeli
newspaper as saying Israel may opt to set a border unilaterally
with the Palestinians and remove more Jewish settlements from
occupied land in the coming few years.

Mofaz, a lead candidate in Olmert’s centrist Kadima party,
the frontrunner in the March 28 general election, said that
“immediately after the elections the government will deal with
the issue of permanent borders.”

“The first priority will be to set them in agreement with
the Palestinians. If we cannot reach agreed permanent borders,
we will take different action,” Mofaz said. “We don’t have to
wait for somebody else to determine our destiny.”

He said Israel would also decide “the future of most
settlements” in the West Bank in the next few years.