Israeli police and soldiers have arrested five Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including an intelligence officer, said Haaretz newspaper on Thursday.
The paper cited Israel Radio as saying that four Palestinians in the West Bank village of Marda, near the Jewish settlement of Ariel, were arrested early Thursday morning.
The four are suspected of planting bombs, shooting on Israeli targets, and throwing Molotov cocktails, said the report.
Meanwhile, Israel Radio cited Palestinian sources as saying that Israeli troops arrested a Palestinian military intelligence officier, Ibrahim Abu Jaradat, on Wednesday night in his Rafat home on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
In another development, the paper cited the station as saying that Palestinians fired on Israeli troops traveling on the so-called Yehuda road north of Hebron, but reported no injuries.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, CNN reports that Palestinians have killed over 112 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and over 458 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded, and over 520 killed.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it." – Albawaba.com
