Israeli forces blew up early Tuesday the home of an Islamic Jihad man who carried out an attack on a West Bank settlement on the eve of the Jewish New Year, killing two people, including a seven-month-old baby.
Israeli soldiers arrived at the home of Mahmoud Hamdan, 22, before sunrise, and destroyed his home in a village near Hebron, Palestinian witnesses and the army said, according to The AP.
In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian man was shot and wounded in the head by Israeli fire Monday night at a neighborhood in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said. The sources listed Ibrahim Qishtah, 25, in critical condition.
Meanwhile, a senior U.S. official said on Monday that Israel's refusal to stop building settlements in the West Bank threatened its future as a democratic Jewish state.
These comments came in a speech by William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, at the U.S.-Arab Economic Forum in Detroit.
"As Israeli settlements expand and their populations increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how the two peoples will be separated into two states," Burns said.
"The fact is that settlements continue to grow today, encouraged by specific government policies and at enormous expense to Israel's economy, and this persists even as it becomes clear that the logic of settlements and the reality of demographics could threaten the future of Israel as a Jewish democracy."
Burns added that Israel's settlement policy ran counter to the goal, supported by U.S. President George W. Bush, of creating a contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel, with the two eventually living side by side in peace. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
