The New York Times
July 9, 2004

Israelis Kill 7 Palestinians


By GREG MYRE

JERUSALEM, July 8 - Israeli forces killed at least seven Palestinians, most of them militants, during intense gun battles early on Thursday in the northern Gaza Strip, where soldiers have been trying to halt Palestinian rocket fire.

A 35-year-old Palestinian woman, Jamilia Hamad, was among those killed in the town of Beit Hanun. She was shot in the abdomen while guiding her seven children through the streets as they tried to escape the fighting, relatives and hospital doctors said.

Israeli tanks and armored vehicles sealed off the town 10 days ago in response to Palestinian rocket fire last month that killed two Israelis just outside the Gaza boundary fence. The main Israeli positions have been on the fringes of the town, though soldiers and Palestinian fighters have waged several gunfights, in which numerous Palestinians have been killed.

Despite the Israeli presence, the Palestinians have unleashed additional rocket salvos in recent days, which, like most of the earlier attacks, have fallen harmlessly. The Palestinians have fired more than 300 of their crude, homemade rockets in recent years, to little effect. The June incident was the first fatal rocket attack.


Before dawn on Thursday, the Israeli forces, supported by helicopters, pushed deeper into the town and immediately encountered heavy fire from Palestinian gunmen, the military said. The Israelis also dispatched bulldozers to level olive and orange groves, Palestinian residents said. Israel says that Palestinians use the groves for cover when firing the rockets.

Six of the seven Palestinians killed belonged to armed factions. One of the dead, Nahed Abu Oudeh, was a local leader of Hamas, the militant group responsible for most of the rocket fire coming from Gaza.

Mr. Oudeh's brother, Munir, said he heard the Israeli soldiers approaching the family house. "I told him the forces were behind the house, but he said he didn't want to leave, he wanted to die as a martyr," Munir Oudeh said in an interview at the hospital, where his brother's body was taken. He said that his brother, clutching an automatic rifle, went out the back of the house and battled the Israeli forces for about 10 minutes before he was killed.

Nahed Abu Oudeh had been a member of Hamas since the late 1980's, and thousands of Hamas supporters attended his funeral on Thursday afternoon in Gaza City.

Meanwhile, as a gun battle neared her home, Mrs. Hamad woke her seven children at 6:30 a.m. and directed them toward the home of a relative, believing it would be safer, said Wafaa Hamad, Mrs. Hamad's 12-year-old daughter. As the family took to the streets, Mrs. Hamad was shot and died of her wounds, doctors at nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said. Wafaa was hospitalized with bullet wounds to her leg and shoulder. She was among several Palestinians wounded in Beit Hanun.

On the Israeli side, an officer was critically wounded during the initial stages of the fighting, the military said. Seven soldiers also were wounded Thursday in southern Gaza, five of them when their jeep was hit by an antitank missile, the army said. In the town of Khan Yunis, the military said, soldiers destroyed partially built and abandoned structures that Palestinians had used for cover when firing on Israeli forces.

Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, says he plans to withdraw Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers from Gaza by the end of next year. Israel says it will continue to strike at armed Palestinian groups, concerned that the withdrawal not be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Hamas and other factions say they will continue to attack Israeli targets because there is no guarantee that the Israelis will withdraw. The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, condemned the latest Israeli operation. This "happens at a time when they are talking about the withdrawal, the fake withdrawal," he said.

In political developments, Mr. Sharon said he would meet Sunday with Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition Labor Party, to discuss the possibility of Labor's joining the coalition government. Mr. Sharon lost his parliamentary majority recently when right-wing members were fired or quit the coalition because they opposed Mr. Sharon's withdrawal plan. The Labor Party supports the withdrawal, and if it joins the coalition, Mr. Sharon would again have a solid majority in the legislature. But the party opposes many of Mr. Sharon's other policies.

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Israel Expels New York Activist

New York Times

JERUSALEM, July 8 (AP) - An Israeli court on Thursday ordered the expulsion of Ann Petter, an activist from New York who had been detained since June 23 after she arrived to protest Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

The court, in Tel Aviv, upheld an earlier decision to deny her entry into Israel and ordered her to leave the country within 24 hours, said her lawyer, Yael Berda. The police had demanded that Ms. Petter be barred because of her affiliation with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group active in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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end NYT article
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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