Palestinian Militants

JERUSALEM // Israel launched a series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip yesterday in response to renewed rocket attacks by Palestinian militants on nearby Israeli communities. The moves by both sides cast doubt on attempts to get the Middle East road map for peace back on track. Israel's defense minister vowed to deliver a "crushing" blow to militants. At least two Palestinians were killed in the attacks, the first that Israel has staged since officially ending its 38-year military rule of the Gaza Strip this month when it pulled its settlers and soldiers out of the densely populated region.

JERUSALEM - After four days of airstrikes that have partially crippled Hamas, Israel signaled interest yesterday in a proposed 48-hour suspension of its offensive in the Gaza Strip to test the prospects for a full cease-fire with the militant Palestinian group. The proposal, offered by France on behalf of the European Union, came as Israel's air force appeared to be running short of bombing targets and losing the advantage of surprise it achieved early in the offensive that began Saturday.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops and armor backed by helicopters crossed into the Gaza Strip yesterday and clashed with Palestinian militants, killing 11, in the most recent in a series of raids into the coastal territory since it was taken over by Hamas. An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops advanced about a half-mile into central Gaza, near the Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps, to look for rocket squads and tunnels used by militants. Hamas gunmen planted explosives and fired rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

JENIN, West Bank -- When an Israeli army officer inadvertently drove alone into this West Bank city on Monday, an angry Palestinian mob torched his car and threatened to lynch him. Noticeably absent from the melee was Jenin's celebrated militant and one of Israel's most wanted men, Zakaria Zubeidi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Zubeidi chose to sit out the riot, idly passing his time in a plastic chair under the eyes of the Palestinian security officials in Jenin, as Palestinian police scrambled to rescue the Israeli officer and escort him safely to Israeli army officials.

JERUSALEM -- Marking the start of what Israeli officials described as a campaign to hunt down Palestinian militants and bombmaking laboratories in the wake of a deadly suicide bombing, Israeli troops and tanks pushed into West Bank cities and villages overnight, arresting half a dozen wanted men, demolishing homes and engaging in scattered exchanges of fire. Israel coupled the raids with a warning to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas that he must crack down on Palestinian militant organizations or a U.S.-backed peace plan would fall apart.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops were on a grim house-to-house search for their comrades' remains here last night, after Palestinian militants blew up an Israeli troop carrier, killing six soldiers, and then said they had made off with some of the body parts. At least seven Palestinians were also killed, and dozens were injured, during an Israeli raid that began overnight Monday as a mission to destroy what the army called weapons factories. Israeli forces unleashed machine-gun fire from tanks, and rockets from helicopter gunships.

ADORA, West Bank - In this hilltop settlement, the first wound was inflicted in April, when Palestinian gunmen disguised as Israeli soldiers shot to death four people in their homes. Most residents, it is safe to say, believed that was the worst that could happen to the community. The second wound came this week, when Israeli authorities charged three Adora residents and two other Israelis, all of them soldiers or army reserve officers, with selling ammunition to Palestinian militants.

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian militant group Hamas, responsible for suicide bombings against Israelis, cut off talks with the new Palestinian prime minister yesterday, sabotaging his attempt to stop violence through negotiations and straining an American-backed peace initiative. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas founder, accused Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas of succumbing to U.S. pressure at the Wednesday peace summit in Jordan by calling for an end to the armed uprising while allowing Israel to retain its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

JERUSALEM - To the cheers of onlookers, Palestinian militants dragged a man accused of collaborating with Israel to a village square in the northern West Bank and gunned him down. Rafiq Daraghmeh, 45, begged for his life, said witnesses, before being riddled with automatic-weapons fire by masked members of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia loosely affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. "It was obvious he was very, very frightened, and he pleaded with them to spare him," said Mahmoud Ali, a resident of the West Bank village of Qabatiyah, the scene of the killing.

JERUSALEM - At least 16 people were killed yesterday afternoon in northern Israel when Palestinian militants rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a bus, which exploded in a fireball and trapped helpless passengers in an inferno. The exact number of casualties was unclear last night. Israeli police said that in addition to the dead Israelis, one or two Palestinians were in the sport utility vehicle and died in what appeared to be a suicide attack. More than 50 people were injured.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops and armor backed by helicopters crossed into the Gaza Strip yesterday and clashed with Palestinian militants, killing 11, in the most recent in a series of raids into the coastal territory since it was taken over by Hamas. An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops advanced about a half-mile into central Gaza, near the Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps, to look for rocket squads and tunnels used by militants. Hamas gunmen planted explosives and fired rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

When Palestinian militants aren't firing at one another, they're lobbing rockets across the border into Israel. In an attack Wednesday, however, a rocket meant for Israel struck a Palestinian house in the Gaza Strip and injured a child. It didn't matter that supporters of the Islamic militant group Hamas and forces aligned with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had warily agreed to a cease-fire to avert a potential civil war. Violence, whether directed inward or outward, keeps Palestinians from what they need to focus on - the paralysis of the Hamas-led government and its consequences.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's Supreme Court rejected yesterday a demand by civil liberties groups for a blanket ban on the military's targeted killings of Palestinian militants, saying the practice could be justified in some instances under international law. But the court, ruling for the first time on one of the conflict's most sensitive questions, set limits on the circumstances in which such killings would be considered legal. It left the military to decide in secret whom to target, while requiring that the legality of each operation would be subject to follow-up judicial review.

Any cessation of violence between Israel and the Palestinian territories is worth applauding because of the lives saved. But what would make the present cease-fire different from the rest would be serious talks between the two governments and substantive changes in the daily lives of their people. Two things come immediately to mind: stopping the daily rocket attacks from northern Gaza into Israel and restoring funds to the Palestinian Authority so it can pay its workers and ease the economic deprivation of many Palestinians.

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip --Angry Palestinians marched in and mourning yesterday for 18 civilians killed by Israeli artillery, baring for cameras the battered faces of two dead children. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel offered to ease tensions by meeting the Palestinian president "anytime, anyplace." "I am very uncomfortable with this event," Olmert said at a business conference in Tel Aviv. "I'm very distressed." Technical failure Saying that he had investigated the artillery strike, which spurred Hamas to warn that it might resume suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, Olmert called the shelling Wednesday a mistake caused by technical failure.

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip -- Most of the Athamna family was asleep when they heard the first Israeli artillery shell slam into their four-story apartment building. Jarred awake, they fled for cover. But one by one, more artillery shells landed, punching car-size holes in the walls, throwing off hot shards of shrapnel and leaving behind one of the worst strikes against Palestinian civilians in six years of conflict with Israel. In an alleyway beside their home, family survivors saw the dead and wounded bodies of their relatives.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - As a teen, Munir Aqra'a earned Israel's attention by throwing Molotov cocktails, was arrested and spent five years in an Israeli prison. By age 25, he says, during a second Palestinian uprising, he helped organize attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers and five Jewish settlers. After four years in hiding in the main Palestinian government compound, Aqra'a is still wanted by the Israelis. But this week his life took a turn. After prodding from the Palestinian Authority, Aqra'a signed a one-page pledge to put down his weapons and not engage in attacks against Israel.

LARNACA, Cyprus - In Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, they were surrounded by Israeli snipers and armor, and holed up in a compound with overflowing toilets and rotting corpses in the basement. Now 13 Palestinian gunmen find themselves in the three-star Flamingo Hotel, across from a beach where Scandinavian tourists sunbathe topless and down the street from hungry crowds in the Salt Lake City fish tavern. The temporary home might seem like a shock for militants expelled from the West Bank in an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

JERUSALEM --The Israeli military killed seven Palestinian militants in fighting early yesterday as tanks and other armored vehicles rolled into areas east of Gaza City in a stepped-up effort to halt Palestinian rocket fire. Backed by helicopters and pilotless planes, Israeli troops have staged ground operations in eastern Gaza over the past three days, killing 20 Palestinians and wounding about 30. Most of the dead were Hamas militants targeted in airstrikes, but several civilians also died.

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli military court ordered yesterday the release of 18 jailed Hamas politicians, including the speaker of the Palestinian parliament and three Cabinet members, who were arrested after the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier in June. The court ruled that the prosecution appeared to have little chance of gaining convictions because Israel allowed the Palestinian parliamentary elections during which the defendants won their seats in January and let them serve for months before arresting them.