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Attacks on jewish gaza settlements after israeli raid Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8720430http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8720430
Deadly Israeli raid, Gaza violence hit truce
Tue Jun 7, 2005 11:20 AM ET
By Yoni Weizman
GANEI TAL, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israel's killing of a Palestinian militant commander drew a deadly rocket barrage on a Jewish settlement in Gaza on Tuesday, the latest in a string of flareups since a ceasefire was declared in February.
Amid the bloodshed, a diplomatic storm was brewing over a disclosure by British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, hours before starting a visit to Israel and the West Bank, that British diplomats had met officials linked to Hamas's non-military wing.
Israeli forces raiding the West Bank village of Qabatiya shot dead the target of the operation, local Islamic Jihad commander Maraweh Ikmil, who the army said had been planning to send suicide bombers into the Jewish state.
Hours later, Islamic Jihad fired rockets at the Ganei Tal settlement in the Gaza Strip, killing two farm workers who were identified by Israeli military sources as a Palestinian and a Chinese. The group said it was retaliating for Ikmil's death.
"Don't they know there are Arab workers here," a Palestinian labourer said, referring to Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military insisted the Qabatiya raid had not violated the ceasefire Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced four months ago.
"We said that the calm would be preserved except in the case of ticking bombs. This was a ticking bomb," an army officer, Major Sharon Asman, told Reuters.
Local residents and medics said a uniformed Palestinian policeman, who was not carrying a weapon, was also shot dead by Israeli forces during fighting with militants in the village.
Palestinian officials have condemned such raids as threatening a truce seen as crucial to the successful implementation of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and a corner of the West Bank beginning in mid-August.
BRITISH CONTACTS
In a BBC radio interview, Straw said British officials had twice met Palestinians, recently elected to town councils, who had links to the militant Hamas group.
"On each of those occasions our staff have spelt out to the elected official ... our position overall in respect of no dealings with Hamas as an organization as long as it continues to support violence," Straw told BBC radio.
Speaking later in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom at his side, Straw tried to calm Israel's fears of a softening by the United States and the European Union of their positions toward Hamas, which they list as a terrorist group.
"We are ready wherever the evidence is to see the strength of the sanctions against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and (the Lebanese group) Hizbollah and any other organization where that is justified," Straw told reporters.
Diplomats in Washington have said the United States is showing signs of changing its attitude toward Hamas in response to the group's growing political influence.
"Hamas is trying very hard to undermine our efforts to move toward peace with the Palestinian Authority," Shalom said. "Hamas is trying to undermine Abu Mazen's (Abbas's) regime as well."
Abbas, voicing fears of civil war, has rejected Israeli calls to dismantle militant groups, as stipulated by a U.S.-backed Middle East peace "road map." Israel says it will not restart talks on Palestinian statehood until he does so.
Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, said Hamas would never "abandon its arms at any time" or its "legitimate resistance" to Israeli occupation.
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Wafa Amr, Dan Williams and Megan Goldin)
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