PA Vows Crackdown on Illegal Arms

GAZA CITY, 30 October 2005 — The Palestinian Authority interior minister vowed yesterday to crack down further on armed groups saying he would deal “firmly and seriously” with illegal weapons manufacturing workshops and storage sites. Nasser Youssef issued a statement as Israel pursued a series of air strikes against rocket launch sites in northern Gaza that knocked out electricity to parts of the territory.

He condemned the Israeli raids and urged “an immediate international intervention” to stop them, but also called on militants to adhere to an eight-month truce. “We will deal firmly and seriously with any foundry or workshop that manufactures weapons or explosives and also with any place used as storage for arms, something that poses a danger to our public,” Youssef’s statement said.

He stopped short of meeting Israel’s demands to disarm militants, nor did he say what kind of action would be taken. But his statement went beyond previous Palestinian vows to confiscate guns carried in public. “We will not enter Palestinian houses to search for arms, but we will not spare any effort to confiscate every weapon we find in the streets, because it would be a tool for chaos and crime,” the statement said.

Israeli air raids on rocket launch sites in Gaza have killed nine Palestinians since Thursday. Israel launched a dozen new raids yesterday, cutting off electric current to several thousand homes but causing no casualties. The airstrikes came amid rising violence since Wednesday when a suicide bomber killed five Israelis in a crowded market in the Israeli coastal town of Hadera.

In retaliation to Israeli airstrikes, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket toward Israel yesterday afternoon, which exploded in the town of Sderot in southern Israel but caused no casualties, an Israeli military source said. Earlier, Israel launched two other attacks and targeted uninhabited areas, one near Jabaliya, the other near Beit Lahya. There were no reports of any casualties.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had ordered a resumption of targeted killing operations after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis outside a falafel stand in the town of Hadera on Wednesday. Islamic Jihad said the attack was to avenge the death of their West Bank military leader who was killed in a gunfight with Israeli troops at the weekend.

By launching regular airstrikes on the northern Gaza Strip, Israel is keeping its territory out of rocket range and effectively creating a “security zone” in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli public television’s military correspondent said. With the prospect of continued Israeli strikes giving militant groups an argument for carrying out further attacks, the Palestinian Authority said it had called on the United States to press Israel for an immediate cease-fire.

“We have asked the United States to make contact with Israel to obtain an immediate cease-fire and an end to Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip,” Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP. “The escalation must be stopped in order to preserve the period of calm (observed by Palestinian armed groups) and not miss the opportunity to move the peace process forward,” he said.

On Friday, one Palestinian militant was killed and another wounded as Israel pressed on with its deadly air campaign in the Gaza Strip. One missile slammed into a car ferrying members of the hard-line Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades after nightfall in the northern Gaza Strip, one day after six civilians and two militants were killed in a similar air strike. The strike blew to pieces the body of 28-year-old Magid Natatt, who belonged to the faction that is loosely linked to Abbas’ ruling Fatah party.