December 27, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa’ad 3, 1424

TEL AVIV, Dec 26: An Israeli helicopter strike killed a top militant and four other Palestinians and a Palestinian suicide bombing killed four people in Israel on Thursday, dealing a double blow to hopes of reviving the Middle East roadmap.

Israel’s defence minister said Meqled Hmaid, an Islamic Jihad leader, was killed in a missile strike in Gaza because he was planning a “mega terror attack”. One other militant died in the attack. Three civilians were killed, including a 15-year-old boy, medics said.

Militant factions have so far rebuffed efforts by Egypt to secure a ceasefire with Israel and salvage the roadmap.

Israel stepped up an already tight blockade on travel in and out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Thursday’s attack in Tel Aviv, the first suicide bombing in three months.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei called for total calm to save the roadmap from collapse and militants vowed bloody revenge for the helicopter strike that killed the commander of Islamic Jihad’s military wing.

But there was no respite in Israeli army raids against Palestinians, with five more militants arrested in the West Bank.

“The assassination of the chief leader of the Jerusalem Brigades will not pass without a deterrent, a strong and an earthquake-like response,” an Islamic Jihad statement said.

Ehud Yatom, a parliamentarian in Israel’s ruling right-wing Likud party, said the suicide attack would give impetus to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for unilateral separation measures that would strip Palestinians of land they want for a state.

Mr Sharon has said he would impose security boundaries in the West Bank within several months if Israel deems the roadmap process, envisaging a viable Palestinian state on land Israel occupied in the 1967 war, to have collapsed irretrievably.

Thursday’s attacks, within less than an hour of each other, shattered a relative lull that had rekindled hopes of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians on the peace plan.

The Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the bombing, calling it an act of revenge for Israeli raids last week on the West Bank city of Nablus.

TEL AVIV BLAST: Israeli police said the Palestinian bomber killed three women and one man at a bus stop on the highway out of the coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv. It was the first suicide attack in Israel since Oct 4, when a bomber killed 23 people.

Israeli authorities say the spell of quiet is deceptive as they had pre-empted some two dozen would-be suicide attacks in the making recently, with dozens of alerts pending still.

After Thursday’s bombing, Israel reimposed a total blockade on the West Bank and Gaza that it said had been eased for Christmas holidays to allow pilgrims to reach holy places.

Condemning both Thursday’s attacks, Palestinian premier Qorei called for “immediate resumption of the roadmap, including the implementation of mutual obligations, the first of which is stopping the cycle of violence”.

Contacts have been pursued to arrange a summit between Mr Qorei and Mr Sharon. But the Palestinians shelved the last meeting to discuss preparations after an Israeli raid into a volatile Gaza Strip refugee camp killed nine people on Tuesday.—Reuters