Learn from Iraq, Israel tells Palestinians

11.00am - by NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

GAZA - An Israeli missile strike killed a Palestinian bomb-making expert in Gaza and gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank on Thursday in a surge of violence ahead of an anticipated US-led peace drive.

Israel said it hoped the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would chasten Palestinian militants into laying down their arms. But militant groups spearheading a 30-month-old revolt said they would not be cowed by the US conquest of Baghdad and threatened to intensify attacks in Israel.

Israeli security sources said the man killed by helicopter gunship fire was Mahmoud al-Zatma, accused by Israel of preparing explosives for suicide attacks carried out by the Islamic Jihad militant group.

The missiles hit al-Zatma, allegedly behind a 1995 suicide bombing that killed 22 Israelis, as he drove through a Gaza City neighbourhood and left his car a mangled wreck. Ten Palestinians were wounded in the strike, medics said.

The army said that in Thursday's pre-dawn attack in the West Bank, gunmen cut through a fence around an army base in the Jordan Valley and opened fire at a tent housing soldiers, killing two and wounding nine before being shot dead.

Violence in the Palestinian uprising for independence had tapered off since the Iraq war began on March 20, but fighting has been on the rise this week. Israeli strikes and raids have killed 13 Palestinians in Gaza in three days.

The bloodshed runs counter to Washington's calls for calm before it introduces a long-delayed programme for Middle East peacemaking in the aftermath of the war in Iraq.

US President George W Bush has said he will present a peace "road map" leading to a Palestinian state by 2005, once Palestinian lawmakers confirm a new reformist cabinet under prime minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas, a leading moderate.

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the killings of Palestinians and accused Israel of trying to sabotage the peace effort.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz hammered home his government's wish that the US conquest of Iraq would teach Palestinians the lesson that they must abandon their uprising and install new leaders.

"I hope that in the era after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Palestinians will understand that the world has changed," Mofaz told reporters.

Palestinians must "give the chance for a new and authentic leadership to grow, end terror and incitement and return to the negotiating table", he said.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, senior political leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, pledged "resistance will escalate and will become more violent".

Islamic Jihad official Mohammed al-Hindi accused Israel of trying to exploit the Iraq war to crush the uprising.

"The result of this new assassination will be resistance and response," he told Reuters in Gaza after al-Zatma's death.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the missile strike. Israel has tracked and killed dozens of militants during the uprising. Palestinians call the practice state-sponsored assassination and Israel calls it self-defence.

An anonymous caller to Reuters claimed responsibility for the West Bank attack in the name of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, an Israeli army unit on a raid exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen in the town of Tulkarm, killing one and wounding four, an Israeli military source said.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank town of Salfit said they had shot dead a 65-year-old Palestinian land broker suspected of collaborating with Israel.

Palestinians have killed dozens of their brethren accused of helping Israeli forces track and kill Palestinian militants.

At least 1987 Palestinians and 729 Israelis have been killed since the uprising flared in September 2000 after negotiations on a Palestinian state froze.

- REUTERS