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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (566865)	4/20/2004 7:12:44 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 769670

Five shot dead in Gaza From correspondents in Gaza City 21apr04 FIVE Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers during an army incursion into the northern Gaza Strip amid continuing tension over the assassination of Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi. Mutassem Nassir, 17, Khaldun Abu Jarad, 24, Ibrahim Raheen, 17, and Mohammed al-Taniri, 17, and Mohammed al-Hinawi, 17, were shot dead either by gunfire or shrapnel during the incursion in the Beit Lahiya area, Palestinian medics and witnesses said. Another 30 Palestinians were wounded, three of them seriously, the medics added. <font color=red>The deaths brought the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, to 3919, including 2950 Palestinians and 899 Israelis.<font color=black> Israeli military sources said troops had been deployed in the Beit Lahiya area after around 15 makeshift rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip and landed in Israel, wounding nine people and damaging property. The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks that came two days after the group's leader was killed in an Israeli air strike. Israeli military intelligence chief Aharon Zeevi said that Hamas was in a state of shock after the killing of Rantissi, less than a month after the assassination of its founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. “Hamas finds itself in a total state of shock, of anarchy after the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Rantissi,” General Zeevi was cited by army radio as telling members of Parliament's defence and foreign affairs committee. Zeevi said Hamas was trying to obtain financial and military aid from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, but that “Israel would do everything in its power to prevent it reaching Hamas.” However, Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's Damascus-based politburo chief, insisted that the movement would soon avenge the deaths of Rantissi and Yassin. “Don't worry, the retaliation will come, and the resistance (to Israeli occupation) will continue,” Meshaal said in a speech in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk. The killing of Rantissi further inflamed Palestinian opinion still seething from US President George W. Bush's enthusiastic endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's controversial disengagement plan. While Israel will uproot all the Jewish settlements in Gaza under the plan, it will also retain control of most of its settlements in the occupied West Bank. Bush has also been accused of pre-empting any final status agreement by ruling out Palestinian refugees being allowed to return to land lost to Israel when it was created in 1948. Jordan's King Abdullah II, slated to hold talks with Bush in Washington, postponed the meeting and flew home while Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath has also shelved a planned meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell said, after meeting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, that “realities” had to be faced but insisted Washington had taken no formal position that would prejudge with future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the borders of the two states or the status of the refugees. Solana also insisted that an eventual peace deal would have to be negotiated by the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli government, meanwhile, justified sweeping restrictions it is to place on Mordechai Vanunu, the nuclear whistleblower on the verge of freedom after 18 years in jail, insisting he still had secrets to tell. As family and friends gathered outside Shikma prison in the southern city of Ashkelon ahead of his release, the defence ministry said Vanunu “still possesses state secrets including some which he has not revealed”. The ministry confirmed that under a set of restrictions agreed with the interior ministry, Vanunu would not be allowed to leave the country, approach any port or airport or make contact with foreigners without prior authorisation after his release on Wednesday. Vanunu, jailed for leaking information about the Dimona nuclear plant to a British newspaper, has denied that he remains any threat to national security and said he had no more nuclear secrets to reveal. heraldsun.news.com.au