MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 5/02: Shimon Peres runs around the world, especially to the gullible American media, and especially to CNN and PBS, with soothing rhetorical jibberish while his Generals further demolish Palestinian homes making fools of those who believed in the "Oslo Peace Process" and its associated "agreements". Meanwhile the Ambassadors representing the weak and co-opted Arab "client regimes" practically begged Kofi Annan in a recent meeting for the U.N. Security Council to "do something to protect the Palestinians", while these very regimes themselves do nothing serious and lack even a little courage to insist on an emergency General Assembly session where Israel could be suspended, a la Apartheid South Africa of old.

GAZA (Reuters - 2 May) - Israeli tanks and bulldozers thrust into a Gaza refugee camp early Wednesday, demolishing homes, killing a Palestinian gunman and wounding 14 people before withdrawing.

The raid on the Brazil camp was mounted hours before Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was due to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington.

The Israeli army said troops moved in to destroy buildings that Palestinian gunmen had used as cover to fire at soldiers and as bases for planting roadside bombs.

"I was asleep when the invasion started but when I recognized the noise of the tanks and bulldozers...I ran in my pajamas from the house. Soon the house vanished," said Palestinian farmer Mahmoud Hassan, 61.

Troops covered what the army called the "operational engineering activities" of the bulldozers with tank and automatic fire as Palestinians fought back with grenade launchers and automatic weapons during the four-hour raid. Three children were among the wounded.

Israel handed back much of the Gaza Strip to Palestinian rule in 1994 under the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords, but held onto a chunk to accommodate some 7,000 Jewish settlers who live next to a Palestinian population of 1.2 million.

It captured the strip, then administered by Egypt, in the 1967 Middle East war. Settlements on occupied land are illegal.

Last month Israel abruptly ended a similar incursion that demolished homes in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after Powell sharply criticized it as an "excessive and disproportionate" response to Palestinian provocations.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said afterwards that the lesson for Israel was to weigh carefully any future handover of territory to the Palestinians because it cannot be reversed.

The Palestinian Authority denounced what it called a "planned aggression" which threatened regional stability.

"We continue to demand international protection for the Palestinian people exposed to the ugliest forms of aggression," a spokesman for the authority said.

Peres was expected to brief Powell on Israel's response to an Egyptian-Jordanian peace initiative aimed at halting seven months of bloodshed as a prelude to renewed negotiations.

A key element of the plan, endorsed by Palestinian leaders, is a halt to construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as one of several confidence-building measures.

Sharon, reiterating his demand for a complete halt to Palestinian violence, said Israel would have to wage a protracted struggle for its security and rejected the idea of halting the expansion of settlements.

"This will be a difficult and extended battle against terror," he said on a condolence visit with his security cabinet to the Jewish settlement of Ofra in the West Bank.

"We will not pay protection money...We will not pay for the cessation of terror. We will not pay (Palestinians) not to kill us," Sharon told reporters who asked about a settlement freeze.

Sharon's government has pledged not to build new settlements but officials have talked of increasing housing in existing ones to accommodate the "natural growth" of their populations.

Around 200,000 Jews live in 145 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, home to three million Palestinians.

Palestinian gunmen ambushed and killed a settler from Ofra Tuesday, hours after an explosion in the nearby Palestinian city of Ramallah killed a Fatah gunman and two children.

Senior Palestinian security officials said Wednesday they arrested two Fatah gunmen suspected of involvement in the blast.

Palestinians blame the bloodletting of recent months on Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We believe that terrorism is occupation and settlements, as well as the exercise of oppression, closures and the killing of Palestinians," Jibril al-Rajoub, head of preventive security in the West Bank, told Reuters in response to Sharon's statements.

Red-eyed from tears and lost sleep, residents of the Brazil camp sifted through the rubble of homes and farm buildings flattened by Israeli bulldozers during the night.

Officials of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees brought in tents, blankets, mattresses and cash handouts for the newly homeless. They told reporters 18 houses had been destroyed in the attack.

The operation followed a gunbattle in the Brazil camp on Tuesday in which troops killed a Palestinian police captain.

In the border town of Rafah, about 2,500 Palestinians marched in a funeral procession for the policeman, Mohammad Abu Jazar, 56, and Mahmoud Aqel, 19, the fighter killed overnight.

"We will avenge the blood of the martyrs and build a bridge of our flesh to freedom and liberation," the crowd chanted.

The Israeli army said a Palestinian sniper fired at an Israeli car in the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif near Khan Younis Wednesday, slightly wounding the driver.

At least 402 Palestinians, 76 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation began in late September after peace talks reached deadlock.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP- 2 May) - Israeli tanks and bulldozers charged into a Palestinian refugee camp Wednesday, tearing down houses used by gunmen and prompting a shootout that left a Palestinian teen-ager dead, officials and witnesses said.

Israeli tanks fired shells to cover the nighttime operation in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, said Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek el-Majaida, a Palestinian security commander. Eighteen homes were destroyed, according to the Palestinians and U.N. relief workers. Palestinian hospital doctors said Mahmoud Aqel, 17, was killed and at least 15 Palestinians were wounded.

The bloodshed came as Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres prepared to meet in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell for talks on a truce to end seven months of fighting.

The Palestinians said the Israeli demolitions took place in an area that is under Palestinian security control, according to current agreements. But Israel said it was responsible for security in the area.

The Israeli military called it a ``pinpointed, defensive action'' to stop the kind of heavy firing on its troops that took place Tuesday.

``They were using civilian buildings to shoot on us and we had to prevent future shootings from these buildings,'' said army spokesman Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz. At daybreak, dozens of Palestinian residents came to survey the remains of their homes. A 13-year-old boy sifting through the rubble was shot in the cheek by Israeli soldiers positioned hundreds of yards away, Palestinian witnesses said.

On several recent occasions, Israel has sent in bulldozers to tear down buildings that Palestinian gunmen have used for cover. The Israeli moves have drawn international criticism, and Israel has withdrawn each time after carrying out the demolitions.

Several thousand mourners attended a mass funeral Wednesday for the policeman who was killed in a clash Tuesday, and Aqel, the teen-ager killed earlier in the day. Masked gunmen fired into the air. One man, holding the Muslim holy book, the Quran, in one hand, had what he said were real explosives strapped to his chest. ``I am ready to blow myself up in the middle of the Zionist entity,'' he shouted to the crowd.

Meanwhile, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon again came under criticism for not doing more to prevent attacks against Israelis. Sharon visited the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ofra to pay condolences Wednesday to the family of Assaf Hershkovitz, who was shot and killed a day earlier while driving his van on a stretch of road repeatedly targeted by Palestinian gunmen. Hershkovitz's father was fatally shot on the same road in January.

Sharon told Hershkovitz's widow, Hila, that ``people thought there was a solution that would take one day. There's no solution in one day.'' She responded: ``But there's not even a ray of light. We're in the same situation.''

In Maariv, a leading daily, editor Yaakov Erez wrote that Sharon, who assumed power two months ago, has not fulfilled his pledge to improve Israel's security.

``The warfare with the Palestinians has turned from being a bothersome nuisance into a near-war, and we are paying the price in blood every day,'' Erez wrote.

Meanwhile, Peres said that he planned to tell Powell and President George W. Bush that U.S. involvement is essential to stopping the Mideast violence.

Speaking in Jordan, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat also said he hoped to reach a truce with Israel. Both sides blame each other for the violence.

``We wish there would (be) an agreement,'' Arafat said after meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II. Jordan and Egypt proposed the truce plan that is under discussion.

The proposal calls for a monthlong cease-fire, which would be followed by a resumption of peace negotiations. However, Israel wants the truce to last two or three months before restarting negotiations.

Since the fighting began last September, 431 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 72 on the Israeli side.