Israel Reins In Settlers
Police evicted about 200 Israelis on Thursday who had set up a makeshift settlement on the spot where Palestinian gunmen killed 12 Israeli soldiers and security guards last month.
The unauthorized settlement, named "Heroes of Hebron," consisted of three shipping containers placed on Palestinian land along a lane Jewish worshippers use between shrines in the West Bank town of Hebron and the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.
There was little resistance from the settlers, who were widely criticized two months ago when they battled security forces during a similar evacuation, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger. Though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a strong supporter of the settlers, he said they would not be allowed to take the law into their hands.
Three settlers accused of assaulting security forces were arrested.
In the West Bank town of Tulkarem, troops demolished the home of a Palestinian they say carried out an attack last month on an Israeli communal farm in which five people were killed, including a mother and her two sons. The alleged gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, 19, remains at large.
Also Thursday, an 11-year-old Palestinian girl, Nada Madi, was shot to death while watching a funeral from the third-floor window of her home in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, her cousin Mohammed Madi said.
The girl lives near an Israeli military outpost, and her cousin blamed Israeli soldiers firing during the funeral of a 16-year-old boy killed Wednesday. The Israeli army was checking the report.
Troops in overnight raids throughout the West Bank rounded up more than 20 Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks on Israelis, the military said.
During Israel's forays into the West Bank in recent months, the army has detained thousands of Palestinian men in roundups that government officials say have slowed, but not halted, attacks on Israel.
In Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers seized the camera of an Associated Press Television News journalist filming troops at the Church of the Nativity. Soldiers took the tape and returned the camera.
In another development, Israeli opposition leader Amram Mitzna said Thursday he would only allow his Labor Party into a coalition government that accepted his policy of withdrawal from Palestinian territories.
Mitzna leads his party into general elections next month. He has said that if elected, he will seek a negotiated treaty with the Palestinians, but if a deal is not attainable he will order a unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
"We are not partners in any grouping which is not based on a political program leading to separation from the Palestinians," he told Israeli army radio.
The phrasing was markedly softer than comments he made at an election rally Tuesday in northern Israel, when he completely ruled out any alliance with incumbent Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party. Sharon says a so-called national unity government is essential as Israel battles a 26-month-old Palestinian uprising and a major economic slump.
The latest poll shows Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party is losing ground in the wake of a bribery scandal. The Likud is now expected to win 35 seats in the 120-member parliament, down from 40, although it would still be the biggest party. The dovish Labor party, in turn, would gain three for a total of 23 seats, according to the poll. The bribery scandal involves money for votes in the Likud primaries, and it has overshadowed the Palestinian problem as the key issue in the elections.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, meanwhile, accused the United States of intervening in Israeli politics in Sharon's favor by seeking to delay publication of a peace plan being drafted by the so-called quartet — the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union.
Quartet leaders will meet in Washington on Friday and had been expected to publicize a final draft of their "road map" to Mideast peace. But there have been widespread reports that the Americans intend to delay revealing the finished document until an incoming Israeli government is installed, after the elections.
"It is very obvious now that contrary to the wishes of the Europeans, the Russians and the United Nations, the United States will not declare the road map," Erekat said. "I believe the non-declaration of the road map is an interference in the Israeli elections on the side of Sharon."