Five Palestinian militants have been killed by Israeli forces, three in a pinpoint helicopter attack and two in a clash with soldiers.

The helicopter fired missiles at a car in which the three men were travelling near Qabatiye in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security officials said.

All three were members of the radical Islamic Jihad and one of them, Muhammed Psharat, was on Israel's wanted list.

Earlier on Sunday, in a gunfight which took place before first light, Israeli infantry killed two militants from another radical Islamic group, Hamas, in the northern West Bank.

The two men were seeking to plant a roadside bomb and detonate it when Jewish settlers were expected to pass by later in the day, Palestinian security officials said.

The daily violence has persisted despite a Mideast truce declared nearly three weeks ago. Weekend talks between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Portugal produced no breakthroughs, only recriminations.

But Peres defended his efforts. "We can't let the situation escalate so we have to keep talking," he said on Israeli television.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military was active on a second front on Sunday when their warplanes blasted a Syrian military radar in eastern Lebanon.

A 15-year-old Palestinian boy died of the wounds he suffered on Friday when he was shot in the neck during clashes with the Israeli forces at a crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel, hospital officials in Gaza said.

In the past nine months of fighting 503 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 118 on the Israeli side. [Ananova]

[The Independent - 02 July 2001] Witnesses said they could barely hear the Israeli jets when they arrived over the Bekaa village of Sarin Tahta yesterday. But they could scarcely have been surprised.

Ever since Hezbollah attacked an Israeli patrol on Friday in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa farms in the south - originally part of Lebanon, controlled by Syria after 1947 but then captured by Israel in the 1967 war - the Lebanese had been waiting for Israel's response. The result: two Syrian soldiers and a Lebanese conscript wounded and a Syrian anti-aircraft radar base destroyed in the Bekaa Valley.

So Israel's plan to strike Syrian rather than Lebanese targets in revenge for attacks at Shebaa has become policy. Hezbollah's killing of an Israeli soldier at Shebaa in April was met by an Israeli air raid that killed three Syrian soldiers at a radar base at Mdeirej, in the mountains above Beirut. The wounding of an Israeli soldier at Shebaa on Friday has been met by the latest air strike.

If Lebanese can sigh with relief, few others can. A direct confrontation between Syria and Israel would be about the most dangerous scenario in the Middle East. An Israeli cabinet statement said yesterday: "This criminal activity by Hezbollah takes place under the authorisation of Syria, whose army has a presence in Lebanon". Putting aside the "criminal" bit - any Arab who militarily opposes Israel becomes a "terrorist" - this was right. Syria does back Hezbollah and has 21,000 soldiers in Lebanon. In fact, the Bekaa - the strategic valley that was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire - is studded with Syrian military camps, tank fortifications and radar bases because it guards Syria's frontier west of Damascus.

A blossom of smoke and a black scar in a field 200 yards from the Rayak-Baalbek highway was all that was left of the old Soviet-made radar facility yesterday after the Israeli - and US-made - jets had gone. A Syrian guardsaid only one word in Arabic: Damarit ("Destroyed"). Journalists were not let near the base.

Since Israeli occupation troops retreated under fire from southern Lebanon in May last year, Syria's "card" - to make Israel bleed in Lebanon as long as it occupied the Syrian Golan Heights - has been considerably reduced in size. Shebaa Farms, a bleak, hilly terrain that even appears on UN maps as part of Syria rather than Lebanon, is the only field of fire Damascus has left to hit the Israelis. President Bachar Assad can afford a few air strikes, with a Syrian "martyr" only proving the country's readiness to suffer for the "sister" country, Lebanon.

But if an Israeli raid were to kill 30 Syrians, Mr Assad would have to respond. It's not difficult - now that the Arabs have adopted Israel's tactic of retaliation as well as its rhetoric - to see how risky this could become. Indeed, scarcely had the Israeli jets returned to their airbases yesterday than Hezbollah mortared an Israeli radar base on a cliff near Shebaa. The Israelis hit back with artillery fire.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah who was by chance at a rally near Sarin Tahta yesterday, warned that Israel was "playing with fire". But both sides have been doing that in Lebanon for 19 years.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/262.htm