More Gaza Raids By Israel

Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships rolled into two Palestinian refugee camps in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday in a sweep for militants, prompting gun battles in which troops shot dead a Palestinian.

The army said soldiers destroyed six factories that were manufacturing rockets. Twenty houses were badly damaged in the Israeli raid, Palestinians said, leaving families homeless.

The raid follows a wave of Palestinian rocket attacks on Jewish settlements, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger, and was the third night of major army raids this week in the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt.

The army also raided the village of Tubas near the West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinian security sources said troops had arrested six militants there, and the army said it arrested a suspected militant near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In southern Gaza, up to 50 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rumbled into the Rafah and Brazil refugee camps before dawn and stayed for several hours, witnesses said.

Khalid Abdullah, 34, said his house was destroyed. "I took my 5 children and my wife and we spent all night in the street," he said.

Palestinians said soldiers broke into the Fatah offices, destroyed equipment and caused considerable damage.

On Thursday night, a Qassam rocket hit a house in Saad, an Israeli village two miles from the Gaza border fence. The house was damaged, but the family was not at home and no one was hurt. The military said several Palestinians were detained.

An army statement said the raid followed "serious recent terrorist attacks on troops," and that its forces withdrew after arresting several suspected militants.

Israeli troops also blew up six foundries used by the Hamas militant group to manufacture Qassam-2 surface-to-surface rockets, the army said.

Hamas's armed wing said it had fired a Qassam-2 at an Israeli community just outside Gaza hours earlier in response to an army raid on the Shijaia neighborhood east of Gaza City on Thursday in which a dead militant's home was demolished.

There were no injuries in the rocket attack, and no one was hurt when a Palestinian anti-tank rocket landed near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, slightly damaging a bus.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ruled out peace talks until violence ends and declared Palestinian President Yasser Arafat irrelevant to efforts at peacemaking.

Palestinians charge that Israel is stalling implementation of an agreement that was to begin an Israeli pullout.

The agreement, announced Aug. 18 by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and his Palestinian counterpart, Interior Minister Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, designated the West Bank town of Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip as test cases. Israel would hand control back to the Palestinians, and if Palestinian security could prevent terror attacks, Israel pledged to ease its chokehold on the rest of the West Bank.

Israel withdrew its forces from Bethlehem on Aug. 20, but there has been no movement in Gaza. Israel charges that Palestinian security forces are not moving against militants there, pointing to daily mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli army positions, Jewish settlements in Gaza and Israeli villages just outside the fence.

Arafat is trying to form a new government after his cabinet quit on Wednesday to avoid losing a confidence vote in parliament. He has less than two weeks to choose a team to serve until presidential and legislative elections on January 20.

Palestinian opinion polls suggest Arafat, 73, will be re-elected.

An opinion poll conducted among 590 Israelis and published in the Maariv newspaper on Friday showed 80 percent of Israelis consider Arafat "irrelevant." Only 15 percent of respondents saw him as a viable negotiating partner.

The poll had a four percent margin of error.

President Bush, who has urged the Palestinians to sideline Arafat, on Thursday reiterated his call for a change of the Palestinian leadership.

"Like all other people, Palestinians deserve a government that serves their interests and listens to their voices," Mr. Bush said in a speech to the United Nations, adding that reform was a prerequisite for peace.

Israel accuses Arafat and his security services of failing to rein in militants behind bomb and gun attacks.

The Palestinians say Israel's reoccupation of West Bank cities and other measures such as military blockades make a crackdown on militants impossible.

At least 1,541 Palestinians and 591 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000 after peace talks stalled.