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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!


Israeli Troops Storm West Bank Town


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02/12/2002 6:14 AM EST

By STEVE WEIZMAN

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli troops raided a West Bank town early Tuesday,
killing a Palestinian gunman in an exchange of fire and destroying a house
before withdrawing five hours later.

Israeli media, meanwhile, reported that the military is preparing for a
large-scale ground assault on Palestinian territory in the event of renewed
firing of Qassam-2 rockets at Israel by the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Palestinian militants
raised the stakes in the Mideast conflict by firing the new, longer-range
rockets into Israel.

In Tuesday's raid, an Israeli infantry unit went into the
Palestinian-controlled northern outskirts of Hebron and arrested a wanted
gunman from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, the Israeli
military said.


During the operation, there were exchanges of fire with the Palestinians. At
one point, troops spotted an armed man fleeing a building and shot him dead,
the military said in a statement. Palestinian security officials said the
dead man was a member of the Palestinian National Guard.

Israeli army bulldozers also destroyed a house, leaving a Fatah member, his
wife and four children homeless. A second building was damaged, with the wall
on the first floor smashed in and closets and furniture visible from the
street.

In a separate raid in the same area, soldiers arrested an alleged member of
the militant Islamic Jihad organization, the army said.

The Hebron-area raid followed airstrikes on Gaza City on Sunday and Monday in
retaliation for the firing of a pair of Qassam-2 rockets at southern Israel.

The daily Maariv reported Tuesday that Ben-Eliezer and Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon are considering establishing a so-called "security zone" in Gaza, a
stretch of land reoccupied by Israel, to move the rockets out of range.

Establishing such a zone in the West Bank would be more difficult because it
would require reoccupying Palestinian towns close to Israel, such as Tulkarem
and Qalqiliya, Maariv quoted security officials as saying.

Sunday's rockets ploughed large craters in two farm fields. The Qassam-2 has
a range of three to five miles, enough to hit Israeli towns from the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. In the past, Hamas has fired several shorter-range
Qassam-1 rockets that caused no damage.

Ben-Eliezer said the rocket attacks represented "a new level of threat."

"You try to deal with it in all sorts of ways - by intelligence, by
prevention and by struggling against those places where you suspect and
discover that there are factories or workshops for manufacturing those
rockets," Ben-Eliezer said.

In Monday's Israeli airstrike, warplanes fired six missiles into the walled
Saraya security compound in downtown Gaza City, setting buildings ablaze and
sending black smoke into the sky.

More than 30 people were injured, most of them lightly, including George
Kochaniec, a photographer for Denver's Rocky Mountain News. Kochaniec was
treated for a hand injury.

Hundreds of Palestinians ran to the stricken compound, demanding that
suspected Islamic militants jailed there be released immediately. Some threw
stones at officers, who fired in the air to keep back the crowd. Palestinian
police said all detainees were moved to another prison shortly after the
Israeli attack.

In Washington, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher criticized Israel's
bombing in populated areas, warning that they could intensify the fighting.
He also called on Arafat to make efforts to stop the rocket attacks.

Israel warplanes blasted a separate Gaza City security compound Sunday night
near Arafat's offices.



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