MIDDLE EAST: Five Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in the Rafah refugee camp at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip yesterday as the Israeli army launched its biggest incursion into the area since the "second intifada" erupted in late 2000, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
The violence came as the Palestinian Authority's prime minister-designate, Mr Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), again failed to reach an agreement with PA President Yasser Arafat on the composition of his first ministerial team, which has to be presented by Wednesday.
Mr Abbas is threatening to resign before even taking office, although the United States is urging him to stand firm.
Mr Arafat is said to be ready to select another member of his Fatah political faction of the PLO as prime minister-designate should Mr Abbas stand down.
More than three dozen Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles, backed up by helicopters, moved into the Rafah camp overnight, apparently searching for fugitive leaders of Islamic extremist groups and for the entrances to tunnels that run under the adjacent border with Egypt, through which weaponry is smuggled.
There were contradictory reports about the number of deaths.
While all five of the corpses were covered in the flags of the Islamic extremist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad at yesterday's funerals, Palestinian medics said that up to three of the dead were civilians, one of them a boy in his early teens, while the fourth was a policeman and the fifth an armed gunman - possibly Mohammad Abu Shamla, the Hamas military commander in the camp whose home was blown up by the army.
Brig Gen Gadi Shamni, the commander of the Israeli forces, said that most of the Palestinian victims were armed gunmen. He said two tunnels had been discovered and destroyed.
The Israeli casualty was a photographer from the army apokesman's unit, Lior Ziv (19), who was hit by Palestinian sniper fire as he accompanied the troops to document the raid.
On Saturday, in the West Bank city of Nablus, a Palestinian television cameraman, Nazih Darwazeh (45) was shot in the head and killed. Palestinians officials claimed the army was deliberately targeting journalists and noted that M Darwazeh, a father of five, was wearing clear, bright "Press" identification.
The army said the death came amid "an exchange of gunfire" during a search for suicide bombers and recruiters.
It said several such suspects had been arrested, including a female recruiter and several female would-be bombers.
Yesterday in the West Bank a Palestinian boy, Abderrahman Abed (15) was shot dead by Israeli troops.
He was said to have been one of a group who were throwing stones and petrol bomb at soldiers.
Israeli military officials say openly that they are now "racing against time" to dismantle what they call "the terrorist infrastructure" in Gaza ahead of an anticipated return to a US-backed political process.
There has been talk of an imminent release of some of the 5,000-plus Palestinians being held without trial in Israeli jails, and of an initial Israeli military pull-back in the north of the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas later yesterday fired another salvo of Qassam rockets into the town of Sderot, across the border in Israel, hitting a block of flats.
But any such diplomatic progress- including the formal publication of the so-called "road map" - is predicated on Mr Abbas's official confirmation as PA prime minister, which is anything but certain.
On Saturday, Mr Abbas walked out of a meeting of the PLO Central Committee, which had been called to finalise his cabinet team. He was protesting at Mr Arafat's refusal to countenance the appointment of Mohammad Dahlan as interior minister.
Mr Arafat apparently regards Mr Dahlan as a potent rival and wants the incumbent, Mr Hani al-Hassan, to retain the interior ministry post.