Israeli forces stormed into the Palestinian refugee camps of Balata near Nablus and Jenin in the West Bank early Thursday morning and killed at least nine Palestiniasns there. One Israeli soldier is reportedly killed in the gunbattles.
The Israeli soldiers and Palestinians engaged in gunbattles in both locations, sources said.
According to the Qatari Al Jazeera TV, at least seven Palestinian Authority policemen were killed during clashes with troops in Jenin. In Nablus, an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles in the Balata refugee camp signalling an invasion by Israeli soldiers.
In gun battles that are continuing, two Palestinian members of the Fatah's Tanzim faction have been killed as well as one Israeli soldier. At least two other Israeli troops were injured, Israeli Army reported. Palestinian sources said scores of Palestinians were injured in Balata.
Israeli sources said the operations were in response to a suicide attack by a Palestinian woman Wednesday night near the entrance to the town of Maccabim, which borders the city of Modi'in, just inside the Green Line, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The Palestinian woman blew herself up at a West Bank checkpoint on Wednesday night, injuring three Israeli policemen. The woman detonated explosives strapped to her body after a policeman asked her to get out of her car when she failed to present identity papers at the checkpoint.
Israel Radio said two Palestinian men in the car were killed either from the blast or from bullets fired by soldiers after the explosion.
Several hours later, Israeli tanks entered the northern and southern outskirts of the Palestinian-ruled town of Jenin and Balata refugee camp on the edge of Nablus in the northern West Bank in a pre-dawn raid, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said. Armed Palestinians fired at the advancing tanks from nearby buildings.
U.N.
Meanwhile, the Security Council ended a two-day public debate on the Middle East late Wednesday, but did not take any action on the Palestinian Israeli crisis.
The last 13 speakers included the Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Fawzi Shobokshi, who surprised many by making a stern attack on Israel.
Shobokshi's remarks contrasted with a proposal by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, in an interview with the New York Times last week, to end the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of land for peace.
In his speech, the Saudi envoy made only one reference to Abdullah's proposal, reiterating the demands for a complete Israeli pullout and offering peace and "good neighborly relations" in return.
"Israel claims that it wants peace and is looking for a safe, secure and peaceful neighborhood and claims that it is the Arabs who are rejecting peace and work towards its destruction," Shobokshi said. "Now the world is sure that the Arabs are calling for peace, for good neighborly relations."
"That's why the crown prince's initiative has met with "overwhelming international support (which) strengthens this strategic choice," he said.
The Saudi envoy said the international community must help the parties solve the conflict in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and declared that an Israeli withdrawal and establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital "will achieve peace and strengthen security and good neighborly relations."
But Shobokshi declared that "Israel has no desire for peace, no desire to settle the Middle East problem or to implement resolutions, and thus it drags the international community into a vicious circle of security considerations to prevent it from considering the very essence and substance of the Middle East which lies in Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands."
"Is this security an exclusive right for Israel?" he asked. "We ask, where is security for the Palestinians?"
The Saudi envoy accused Israel of seeking a blockade of Palestinian territories, demolishing houses and conducting forcible expulsions. It also said Israel was guilty of "racism ... and systematic terrorism."
"The objective of Israel was and remains to expel the Arab people from Palestine and to occupy even more Palestinian territory in order to set up an exclusive state," he said.
On Thursday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the council had an "essential role" to play in helping to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. "The lack of mutual confidence between the two sides makes a third-party role essential," he said.
But the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, told the council early in the debate that "as a practical matter, Security Council action at this time will not resolve the problems between Palestinians and Israelis."
The council has met less than half a dozen times since the start of the intifada, and on the two occasions that a resolution was discussed, the United States vetoed it, reported AFP. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
