Palestinian children killed in army raid on Gaza Strip

ISRAELI forces killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, two youths and two gunmen yesterday in a raid in the Gaza Strip.

The incident marred the Palestinians’ annual commemoration of their displacement during Israel’s creation.

The Israeli army said it entered the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza to search for militants behind mortar bomb and rocket attacks on Jewish settlements and a town in Israel.

The Palestinians said the raid, preceding a meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers on Saturday and top-level US-Israeli talks in Washington next week, was intended to undermine international peace moves.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who Israel and the United States have tried to sideline in favor of a reformist Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, took centre stage on “Nakba” (Catastrophe) day in a televised address to his people.

“No peace before the full Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian and Arab lands to the line of June 1967,” Arafat said. Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

All Israeli governments since that conflict have said that will never happen.

An Israeli military commander said the incursion in Beit Hanoun was open-ended, unlike previous raids in Gaza which have lasted for several hours.

“We’re remaining in this strip of territory in the coming days,” Major General Doron Almog, head of Israel’s southern command, told a news conference in Tel Aviv.

Witnesses said 12-year-old Mohammed al-Za’anin was among the five killed by Israeli fire and said the homes of four suspected militants were demolished. Fifteen Palestinians were wounded.

Israel launched the raid two days before talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at which they are due to discuss a new Middle East peace plan known as the “road map”.

The proposal, backed by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia, calls for an end to 31 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, reciprocal confidence-building measures and a Palestinian state by 2005.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior adviser to Arafat, accused Israel of trying to “blow up the road map” by raiding Gaza.

Citing security concerns, Israel has not accepted the plan. Sharon will voice his government’s objections at White House talks with US President George W Bush on Tuesday.

The Nakba anniversary has taken on extra resonance because Abbas is a refugee himself.

He took office on April 30 after international pressure for democratic and security reforms.

Palestinians attended rallies holding banners with the names of villages in what is now Israel from which they fled or were expelled in the war over the Jewish state’s founding in 1948.

Sirens sounded in Gaza City, bringing life to a halt for three minutes to honor Palestinians killed in violence with Israel.

Some 20,000 people marched in a rally in the city as a loudspeaker blared: “They said the old die and children forget, we will never forget and we will return.”