December 28, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 4, 1424

NABLUS, Dec 27: A Palestinian teenager was killed here on Saturday as the Israeli army pushed on with an operation to round up militants and maintained a ring of steel around the occupied territories imposed in the aftermath of a Christmas Day suicide bombing.

Raed Rayan, 17, was struck in the head by Israeli army gunfire during clashes between troops and stone-throwing demonstrators near the Old City of Nablus in the West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.

Thirty others were wounded by live fire or rubber bullets, the sources added.

The Israeli army insisted that it had only used rubber-coated bullets and teargas during the operation after it came under attack from youths hurling incendiary devices.

The Israeli army has been operating in and around Nablus since the middle of the month on what it called a mission to hunt down wanted Palestinian militants planning to carry out attacks.

The operation stepped up a gear by moving into the old city on Friday, a day after a Palestinian suicide bombing near Tel Aviv killed four people, apart from the bomber.

Around 80 people have so far been rounded up by the Israeli military in Nablus and the adjoining Balata refugee camp, according to Palestinian security sources.

The closure of the West Bank has effectively prevented some 33,000 Palestinians from entering Israel for work or business.

Israel had been easing travel restrictions in the territories, including the dismantling of several key checkpoints, before the Tel Aviv attack, which came less than an hour after an Islamic Jihad military leader was killed on Thursday in a targeted Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza City.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has threatened to “disengage” from the Palestinians by implementing his own unilateral measures if they fail to crack down on groups such as Jihad, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was behind the Tel Aviv attack.

Mr Sharon was expected to hold talks on Sunday with General Giora Eiland, from Israel’s military’s general command, about drawing up the “separation plan”, public radio reported.

Gen Eiland was being placed in charge of a special department of planning from Jan 15 that would be directly answerable to Sharon’s office, the report added.

He will preside over a special commission which would also comprise representatives from the army, defence ministry, foreign ministry and the justice ministry.

No date has yet been fixed for the commission to start its work.

Sharon’s disengagement plan has been widely criticized, with the Americans warning that any unilateral measures must not impede the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The US-backed roadmap, which targets the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005, has made little progress since its June launch.

High-level talks have been frozen for more than four months and a much-anticipated summit between Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qorei has been repeatedly pushed back.

DEMONSTRATION: More than a thousand Palestinians were joined by foreign peace activists in a demonstration on Saturday in the West Bank town of Qalqilya against Israel’s separation barrier, a day after troops fired on a similar protest with live bullets.

The protesters brandished banners urging an end to construction of the “Apartheid Wall”. The barrier mainly consists of barbed wire fencing but takes the form of a concrete wall around Qalqilya.

The army fired teargas and rubber-coated bullets to disperse the crowd after they had been the target of stone-throwing, according to an AFP photographer at the scene. Two protestors were slightly injured.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, around 50 foreign activists also staged a protest against the barrier.

An Israeli pacifist and an American woman were wounded by Israeli gunfire Friday during another protest against the barrier involving some 400 Palestinians and 150 foreign activists in a village southeast of Qalqiliya. —AFP