Palestinian Gunmen Storm Israeli Border
Pastor Dale Morgan
Palestinian Gunmen Storm Israeli Border*
Saturday June 9, 2007 6:31 PM
By SARAH EL DEEB
Associated Press Writer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Palestinian gunmen broke through Israel's
heavily-fortified Gaza border and battled troops inside Israel for about
two hours Saturday in a failed attempt to abduct an Israeli soldier. One
of the raiders was killed.
It was the first cross-border incursion since militants killed two
soldiers and abducted a third a year ago.
The Israel military said troops shot dead one of the raiders.
Palestinians said another three militants escaped back to Gaza unharmed.
The Islamic Jihad group said it carried out Saturday's attack, near the
Kissufim crossing between Gaza and Israel, along with the Al Aqsa
Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas' Fatah movement.
``The aim of the operation was to withdraw with the soldier in
captivity,'' said Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad. ``But the
participation of Israeli helicopters prevented that.''
On June 25 last year Palestinian militants killed two soldiers and
snatched one near the Kerem Shalom frontier post, about 15 miles south
of the site of Saturday's shootout. The abducted soldier, Cpl. Gilad
Shalit, is still missing.
A five-month truce between the Gaza militants and Israel collapsed in
May when a string of Palestinian rocket attacks into southern Israel
triggered Israeli air strikes in response.
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been scheduled to meet
in the West Bank this week to discuss the latest round of violence, but
the Palestinians called it off, accusing Israel of rejecting all their
proposals in preparatory talks.
Israel will only talk to Abbas, shunning the Palestinian government
headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, the Islamic group
behind the deaths of scores of Israelis in suicide bomb attacks, which
is pledged to Palestinian rule over all of historical Palestine,
including present-day Israel.
Hamas has shrugged off international demands that it renounce violence
and recognize Israel's right to exist, but a senior official Saturday
took what appeared to be a softer line, saying only that Palestinians
seek a state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
Hamas was founded on a pledge to seek Israel's destruction, but some in
the movement have moderated their stance as part of the coalition with
the more pragmatic Fatah. The Hamas-Fatah government's platform calls
for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and
east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.
``Now there is one team, one program, one united government,'' Moussa
Abu Marzouk, a deputy to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, said in an
interview published Saturday in the Hamas-linked ``Palestine.''
newspaper. ``So there is a big chance to reach the goal we agreed upon
at this stage, which is a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and
Jerusalem,'' he said.
This week marks the anniversary of the 1967 war and Palestinians and
foreign activists held a rally at Israel's West Bank separation barrier
north of Jerusalem Saturday to protest against four decades of Israeli
control.
``We tell the world that 40 years of occupation is enough,'' said one of
the protesters, Allam Jarar, 56. ``This occupation must be stopped, and
the Palestinian people must be given the right to self-determination.''