http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061103/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians


Israeli troops kill Palestinian woman By YAKUB RALWAH, Associated Press Writer
23 minutes ago



BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip - Israeli forces opened fire Friday on a group of women who streamed to a Gaza mosque to serve as human shields for gunmen holed up there, killing one and wounding 10, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

The dead woman was one of several hundreds who heeded a call by Hamas militants to ring the mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Their presence there allowed the gunmen inside to escape, ending their 19-hour standoff with soldiers parked outside in tanks and armored personnel carriers, the army and militants said.

On Friday, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was taken to the intensive care unit of the medical center where he is hospitalized after his overall condition and heart function deteriorated, the Ynet Web site reported Friday.

His condition is stable, Ynet said.

A spokesman for the Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv was not immediately available for comment.

Sharon suffered a major stroke in January, and has been in a coma since.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, troops seized Beit Hanoun in their fiercest bid in months to halt Palestinian rocket fire on nearby Israeli communities. More than 20 Palestinians, most gunmen, have been killed since the offensive began, including an unidentified 22-year-old man killed Friday.

The mosque became the focus of the fighting in the town after gunmen — estimates ranged from one dozen to several dozen — sought refuge from troops there Thursday. Most were thought to belong to the military wing of the ruling Hamas party.

Armored vehicles quickly surrounded the building, and the two sides began exchanging fire that lasted throughout the night, the military and Palestinian security officials said.

Israeli soldiers trying to pressure the gunmen to surrender also threw stun and smoke grenades, and knocked down an outer wall of the mosque with a bulldozer, causing the ceiling to collapse.

With sporadic shooting persisting Friday morning, Hamas radio broadcast a call to women to go to Beit Hanoun to shield the militants. Dozens of women left their homes to a hurry to the mosque, and en route, came under Israeli fire, witnesses and officials said.

One woman, about 40, was shot dead, and 10 others were wounded, they said.

The army said troops spotted two militants hiding in the crowd of women and opened fire, hitting the two.

By mid-morning Friday, a large group of veiled women protesters had gathered outside the mosque, where troops were positioned in tanks and armored personnel carriers. The army said the gunmen inside the mosque were able to take advantage of the demonstration to escape because there weren't enough infantrymen to block the protesters from approaching the building, and troops didn't want to shoot into the crowd.

But live ammunition was fired in the course of the demonstration, wounding a Palestinian cameraman and an unidentified woman.

"The criminal enemy campaign against our people will collapse and fail, like previous campaigns," vowed Ismail Radwan, a Hamas spokesman.

Loudspeakers across Gaza called on people to come to demonstrations after Friday prayers to express solidarity with Beit Hanoun. By late morning, two rallies were already in progress in Beit Hanoun, and militants in the crowds were firing at soldiers, the army said.

Elsewhere in Beit Hanoun, Israeli troops lowered their visibility, after two days of fierce fighting.

No airstrikes were reported, and residents said infantrymen had stopped patrolling the streets. Tanks and armored personnel vehicles were in sight, however, and snipers were positioned on about two dozen rooftops.

The army said it targeted Beit Hanoun because it was a major staging ground for rocket attacks. But Israeli officials have said the takeover of the town did not signal the start of a wider-scale military offensive in Gaza.

Militants have been undeterred by the offensive, however, and have continued firing rockets, including two that landed in southern Israel on Friday, slightly wounding two people.

The incursion into Beit Hanoun was launched as Abbas, a moderate, tried to form a new government with Hamas. A top Abbas aide said Thursday that the Palestinian president would seek new elections if talks do not produce results in about two weeks.

Abbas has been trying to end a punishing aid cutoff by setting up a government acceptable to the West, either in a power-sharing arrangement between Hamas and his Fatah movement, or by appointing independent professionals agreeable to the ruling party. Hamas has balked at demands that it recognize Israel, however, and no solution to the deadlock has emerged.

Independent legislator Mustafa Barghouti, who has been shuttling between the two sides, said Thursday that an agreement on a new government is close, but he would not disclose details. "We have made good progress. We are almost there," Barghouti said after meeting with Haniyeh.

In other news:

• A 65-year-old Palestinian woman was killed in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, caught in crossfire between militants holed up in a house and Israeli soldiers on an arrest raid, witnesses said.

The army said forces were operating in Bethlehem, but had no other details.

• Israeli troops opened fire at two Palestinians preparing a car bomb in the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday morning, killing one and wounding another, the military said.

Palestinian officials identified the wounded man as a senior militant from a violent faction affiliated with the military wing of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party and the dead man as his teenage brother.

• Israeli troops arrested a Palestinian Cabinet minister in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Friday, Palestinian security officials said.

The officials identified him as Public Works and Housing Minister Abdel Rahman Zidan of the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party. Dozens of other Hamas ministers and lawmakers have been arrested in previous Israeli sweeps after Hamas-linked militants killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third in a cross-border raid on June 25.

The Israeli army said only that it arrested a Hamas activist.


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This is the primary reason why I'm not more sympathetic to the Palestinians. They absolutely refuse to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and yet Israel gets the shit end of the PR stick.

Who's they? All Palestinians or the militants?

No one sensible could possibly sympathize with people who use such tactics, but the real losers in all of this are the Palestinian civilians, who get royally fucked by everyone.

Yes, and the Palestinian civilians are, as a group, doing a bang up job of trying to get out of the situation they're in. See the bolded parts of the article. You can't really claim that they are being held hostage by an extremist minority when nearly half support suicide bombing and continued armed resistance. When extremists and their supporters make up a plurality, how is there any hope of moving forward?

To me, it just seems hopeless. The only thing that can happen I guess would be a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank, but then of course the Israeli's will take most of the water and what have you. It won't end the fighting because there will always be some injustice, real on construed.

Desperate people do desperate things, and believe them as well. I'm sure you'd agree that as a species generally, our tendency is to try and fix things by violence.

You have to put yourself in the place of these people to even get a glimpse of what they've gone through and why they think the way they do. It is no surprise at all that Hamas is popular. I don't doubt that if I was Ahmed Average Palestinian in the West Bank, I'd probably think Hamas was in the right as well.




I don't think unilateralism can ever work in this conflict. It leaves too much room for the likes of Hamas to "claim victory" and for the civilian Palestinians to believe them. That would only lead to more violence, and more ripostes from the Israelis.

The first step has to be an open telephone line in Tel Aviv to the politically legitimate Palestinian leaders. It will be a painful process but it has more chance of success than the status quo. You can't just stick a pro-Western leader in there and expect the Palestinians to hold him up as credible.

I have serious doubts as to whether the Israelis (at least the Right) want there to be a Palestinian state at all. Why give up any of the West Bank if you don't need to?

"Desperation" can NEVER justify their actions. Ever. And who's to say that the Israelis aren't desperate? WHy do the palestinians have a monopoly on the "desperation" tactic?

Whoever said anything about either justification or monopoly? I'm just saying I understand. It's easy for us to sit here in our comfortable Western chairs and condemn their actions. The simple fact is, we have no fucking idea what they go through.

http://news.sympatico.msn.ctv.ca/TopSto ... yline=True


Israeli forces fired on a crowd of Palestinian women trying to protect gunmen hiding in a Gaza mosque, killing at least two of them and wounded several others.

CTV.ca News Staff
Palestinians gather around the wreckage of a car belonging to Hamas militants after it was hit by an Israeli missiles in Gaza City on Friday. (AP / Adel Hana)
Palestinians gather around the wreckage of a car belonging to Hamas militants after it was hit by an Israeli missiles in Gaza City on Friday. (AP / Adel Hana)

Hundreds of women came to the mosque, located in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, and were urged to form a ring around the building by Hamas radio.

"Palestinian gunmen had holed up inside of this mosque," said CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer, reporting from Jerusalem.

"It had been a number of hours of a standoff, and so a call to women was broadcast over the radio, which is very rare. Women responded in droves. They started to head to the mosque and that's when Israeli troops opened fire."

Hospital officials said the two killed women were both aged 40. One of the wounded, a 36-year-old housewife named Tahrir Shahin, told The Associated Press she had felt compelled to come to the mosque.

A bullet struck her leg, which doctors were forced to amputate above the knee. She has seven children.

"I was so upset about what was happening, so I answered their call," she said in hospital.

Between one dozen and three dozen gunmen had been hiding out in the mosque since Thursday, reportedly seeking refuge from Israeli troops. The militants were thought to be armed members of the ruling Hamas party's military wing.

The Israeli army said they fired into the crowd after noticing two of the militants hiding among the women.

The large crowd that had gathered by mid-morning Friday helped the militants to escape, because there weren't enough ground troops to keep the protesters away from the building, the military said.

Israeli troops had bombarded the mosque with stun and smoke grenades, and bulldozed an outer wall of the structure in an attempt to force the gunmen to surrender.

Israeli soldiers moved into Beit Hanoun on Wednesday. On Thursday they tightened their grip on the town with helicopters, tanks and ground forces moving in to stop the barrage of rockets they believe are being fired from there into Israel.

Mackey Frayer said the situation in Beit Hanoun has been tense over the past few days and there are varying reports about how many people have been killed since Wednesday.

"The army is saying 34, most of them militants. Palestinian officials are saying the number is actually closer to 20," she told CTV Newsnet.

Later in the day, two protests erupted, with demonstrators reportedly firing at Israeli soldiers, rounding out two days of fierce fighting.

Around the town, Israeli forces lowered their profile. Soldiers stopped patrolling the streets, though snipers were still perched on rooftops and tanks were still in position on the streets.

Despite the crackdown on Beit Hanoun, rockets have continued to land in Israel.

Two Israelis were slightly injured in southern Israel on Friday when two rockets struck the region.

Israel said the Beit Hanoun operations don't indicate a wider offensive into Gaza, but was designed specifically to stop rocket attacks from that town, Mackey Frayer said.

"The defence minister made it very clear this operation wasn't going to be for show," she said.

"Israel has grown very tired and very impatient with the rockets that are constantly being fired at Israeli border towns from these northern villages like Beit Hanoun, and they said they wanted to go in there to prove their point and to try and stop the firing of rockets."

Other developments

The incursion was launched as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate, tried to form a new government with Hamas.

Abbas will seek new elections if talks do not produce results in about two weeks, according to reports.

Meanwhile, former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was put into intensive care after his overall condition and heart function deteriorated on Friday.

Sharon suffered a stroke in January and has been in a coma ever since.

With files from The Associated Press

While we're busy condemning the Palestinian militants... might I mention also that the Israelis military commanders are the scum of the fucking earth. So a few militants are hiding among civilians, so tough luck to the civilians eh?

Someone get me a bucket.

What do you mean by "civilians"? There weren't any.

I suppose you think 40-50 year old women trying to protect their sons are terrorists.

Their sons were launching grenades across the border, and then when the cops showed up, they hid in a mosque and called their mommies on the local radio station to be human shields. In this case, yup.

Cool. Then I'm a terrorist sympathizer. Wanna report me?

They're the scum of the earth.

Shame they won't just die and let the Jews piss on their graves, eh?

wow you read my mind. That's my ultimate goal.

I don't understand why you support this.

It's one thing to sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians.

It's one thing to disapprove of teh Israeli military and their methods.

But the two big rules in combat are 1) don't use religious buildings for military purposes, and 2) don't use civilians as human shields.

I have difficulty seeing how anyone could not see this particular group of guys as complete fucking cowards. Their mothers were a HELL of a lot braver than that lot. And of course the Israelis get blamed for attacking a mosque and killing a woman, like they sought out a mosque full of women to attack.

those bloodthirsty jews, always up to their old tricks... i wonder how much blood they got from that woman to use in their baking?

I agree with most of what you're saying, but the Israeli incursions into Gaza are fucking relentless. I don't approve of the tactic used by the militants at all, but I understand why the women did what they did. And I understand why the Palestinians have lost their moral compass completely.

i'd agree with that totally, but the thing i really don't understand is how most americans can't understand these actions, whereas if america ws in a situation even remotly comparable to isreal and palestine, the violence would be so much worse. In my eyes anyways.

Why are the Israelis continuing to enter Gaza? Is it the Qassams or do the Palestinians still have some Israeli hostages?