Qorei accuses Israel of wrecking peace hopes

 
Islamic Jihad vows to avenge Israeli air strike amid new round of deadly violence in West Bank.

 
JERUSALEM - Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei accused Israel Sunday of trying to torpedo hopes for peace with a new round of deadly violence in the West Bank as thousands thronged the streets of Gaza at funerals for victims of an Israeli air strike.

"This is an escalation from the Israeli side designed to close any hope of reaching a ceasefire agreement," Qorei told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah as Israeli security forces, bracing themselves for retaliation from suicide attackers, beefed up defenses along the border with the Palestinian territories.

But Israel's Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz accused the country's highest court of aiding would-be suicide attackers after judges ordered a suspension to building work along a section of the controversial West Bank barrier.

The latest deaths, which brought the toll since the start of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 to 3,791, came as a 15-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers during the funeral for a wanted militant who had been killed hours earlier in a West Bank refugee camp.

Riad Abu Shallal was killed during the clashes which broke out at the funeral for Mohammed Awis, who had been shot dead only hours earlier by troops on patrol in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.

An Israeli military source said that Shallal was targeted as he opened fire on forces in the area.

Awis, 24, was a member of the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. He had been on an Israeli wanted list, Palestinian sources added.

At funerals in Gaza for the victims of a helicopter strike Saturday evening, a leader of Islamic Jihad put Israel on notice to expect revenge attacks.

"The Al-Quds Brigades cannot be silent in the face of these massacres and this assassination policy," Abdullah al-Shami told the crowds in Gaza City.

More than 4,000 Palestinians turned out to pay their last respects to Mahmud Jouda, 30, as his body was taken in a cortege from Gaza City to the nearby Jabalya refugee camp.

Jouda, a leader of Jihad's armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, was killed alongside fellow militant Amin al-Dahduh, 42, in an Israeli helicopter strike late Saturday.

Dahduh's 20-year-old cousin Ayman, not affiliated to the group, was also killed. The cousins were also buried in Gaza City on Sunday.

An Israeli military spokesman said the strike targeted "a vehicle carrying senior Islamic Jihad terrorists who were responsible for planning a number of terror attacks against Israeli civilian and military targets".

Israeli security services fear any reprisals will be launched from the West Bank, where authorities are building a massive barrier which they say is designed to foil suicide attacks.

Israel's supreme court Sunday ordered the suspension of construction of a section of the barrier northwest of Jerusalem where two Palestinian protesters were killed last week, judicial sources said.

The suspension order, which will remain in force until next week, allows the court to examine appeals presented by residents of eight Palestinian villages in the West Bank against construction of the barrier on their land.

The announcement infuriated Mofaz who said that "any judicial delay will give a suicide bomber the chance to enter Israeli territory."

Israel began work on a 42-kilometer (25-mile) section of its barrier last Tuesday which goes through Biddo and the neighboring village of Beir Surik, prompting daily protests and clashes with soldiers and border police.

The start of the barrier construction in the area came as the International Court of Justice in The Hague was conducting three-day hearings into the barrier's legality which ended on Wednesday. No date has been set for the court to deliver its non-binding verdict.

The weekend flare-up in violence came as Fatah proposed an "immediate and mutual" ceasefire with Israel.

Its leadership made the call Sunday after a three-day meeting in Ramallah, and after adopting a resolution teh day before stating its opposition to attacks on Israeli civilians and support for a "peaceful struggle" with Israel.

Qorei, a senior member of Fatah, has been trying to persuade armed factions to declare a halt to their campaign of violence but has warned chances of such a move are being undermined by Israeli attacks.