Israel kills Palestinian militants as raids escalate

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel killed two Palestinian militants in
a Gaza air strike on Tuesday, bringing to 10 the number of
gunmen it has cut down in a surge of attacks ahead of the
naming of a Palestinian government and an Israeli election.

In the biggest flare-up of violence since Ehud Olmert
became Israeli interim prime minister last month, a Palestinian
stabbed to death an Israeli woman and wounded others on Sunday
and a rocket fired from Gaza on Friday wounded an Israeli baby.

After the two Palestinian attacks, Olmert pledged in a
speech “to strike anyone who tries to carry out terrorist
activity” — adopting a tough line as Hamas gears up to form a
government and Israel prepares for its own poll on March 28.

Mohammed Abu Sharia, a leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
in Gaza, and Suhail Baker, also a member of the group, which
belongs to President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, were the
latest to die in an Israeli attack.

Witnesses in Gaza City said an Israeli aircraft fired a
missile at their car. At the local morgue, thousands of al-Aqsa
gunmen fired into the air and vowed revenge.

“The Israel Defense Forces carried out an aerial attack on
a vehicle carrying al-Aqsa brigades terrorists in Gaza. They
were involved in rocket attacks,” a military spokesman said in
Tel Aviv.

Earlier in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian security
sources said Israeli troops killed a senior Islamic Jihad
commander, Ahmed Radad, in an early morning raid in the city of
Nablus.

In a move that could further jeopardize any future peace
efforts, a top Hamas leader said in Cairo the next Palestinian
prime minister was very likely to be a member of the Islamic
militant group, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

Israel and the United States say they will not hold talks
with members of Hamas, which trounced Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in January 25 parliamentary
elections.

SETTLEMENT BLOCS

In his latest public remarks, Olmert reaffirmed his
intention to hold on to major Jewish settlement blocs in the
occupied West Bank in any future peace deal.

Touring Israel’s barrier in the West Bank, a project it
says is intended to stop suicide bombers but which Palestinians
see as a land grab, Olmert repeated an order to complete the
network of razorwire fences and concrete walls “as quickly as
possible.”

In other violence, Israeli forces pounded northern Gaza
with artillery fire and its air force bombed a bridge and six
roads, saying it was to prevent rocket fire.

One shell hit a home in northern Gaza, wounding a
15-year-old girl, medics and witnesses said. A rocket fired
from Gaza crashed into the yard of a house in the southern
Israeli town of Sderot, causing damage but no casualties, the
army said.

The violence came as Hamas officials huddled for talks in
Egypt about forming a new Palestinian government. Asked whether
a Hamas member would become the new prime minister, Hamas
leader Ismail Haniyeh told Reuters: “This is highly expected.”

But he said it was too soon to talk about names.

Hamas officials also said the group expected to control
several Palestinian security agencies once it heads a
Palestinian government, a shift that could cause alarm in
Israel and abroad and trigger infighting between Palestinian
factions.

But a Palestinian security official later suggested that
Abbas would still have say over day-to-day security operations.

In an air strike in Gaza on Monday, Israel killed two
members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of
Abbas’s Fatah movement.

On Sunday, Israel killed five Palestinian militants,
including an Islamic Jihad bomb-maker, in two separate air
raids in Gaza. A sixth Palestinian who was injured died of his
wounds in an Israeli hospital, medics said.

(Additional reporting by Atef Sa’ad in Nablus)