Ten Palestinians were wounded late on Monday, two of them seriously, during attacks by Israeli forces in Palestinian-controlled territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, officials told AFP. Meanwhile, the Hamas resistance group said it was readying more suicide bombers to retaliate.
Seven Palestinains were wounded, one of them seriously, by Israeli shells and machinegun fire near the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza strip, security and hospital sources said.
An Israeli army spokesman said that the Israeli forces had been responding to Palestinians who had thrown grenades.
In the West Bank, officials said three Palestinians were also wounded, one of them seriously, in exchanges of gunfire with Israeli soldiers near southern Bethlehem.
The Israeli army claimed the soldiers were responding to Palestinian gunfire.
However, Palestinian officials said that Israeli forces had tried to penetrate 100 meters into a Palestinian-controlled zone, but that Palestinian forces had tried to prevent them.
Palestinian security officials also said two Israeli bulldozers, escorted by a tank and six army jeeps, on Monday leveled ground inside Palestinian-controlled territory near Gaza City.
They said the bulldozers spent a few hours flattening several hectares (acres) of land before withdrawing without incident, the officials said.
The unexplained operation was in contravention of the 1993 Oslo accords, which granted Palestinians full civil and security control in some sections of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli tanks have flattened several Palestinian security posts in the region in recent weeks, while missile attacks have leveled security bases inside the Gaza Strip following mortar attacks on Jewish settlements.
In occupied east Jerusalem Monday, two newly-built residential buildings were also razed by the Israeli authorities on the pretext that they had not obtained construction permits.
Such permits are nearly impossible to get under an Israeli policy to limit the growth of Arab areas in the occupied city, say the Palestinians and various human rights groups.
Meanwhile, Haaretz reported that the military wing of Hamas said Monday it had suicide bombers in Israel waiting for orders to avenge the deaths in the Gaza Strip of a Palestinian activist and his two children.
"We have mujahideen (fighters) inside the Zionist entity awaiting the signal to explode like an earthquake and turn the Zionists to pieces," a member of Hamas's military wing, Izz El Din Al Qassam, shouted over loudspeakers before Abu Zeid's funeral.
Hamas has been behind scores of suicide bombings in Israel, most recently on August 9 in occupied Jerusalem, in which 15 people and the suicide bomber were killed.
The operations have had their influence on Israeli society, with 70 percent of those surveyed in a recent poll saying that they no longer trusted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to guarantee their safety.
In the Israeli camp, Sharon met Monday with the top echolon of the occupation army, accoring to Al Jazeera satellite channel. He discussed with them ways to stop the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of occupation.
Palestinian officials say that over 40 political leaders and resistance fighters have been killed under Israel's assassination policy, variously called by the euphemisms "targeted killings," "liquidations," "surgical strikes," and "interception operations."
AFP's latest death tally for the Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation comes out to 13 Arab Israelis, 555 Palestinians, and 146 Israelis, putting the ratio of casualties at around four Palestinians killed for every Israeli loss.
Israel’s wounded number in the high hundreds, according to army sources, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society puts the number of Palestinians injured at over 14,000.
Amnesty International reported early this year that almost 100 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli soldiers, nearly all in situations where the occupation troops were under no immediate threat.
The latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation began last September – Albawaba.com
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