GAZA CITY, May 30: Two Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli air strike on Wednesday after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas announced plans to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for the first time in almost two months.
“Our meetings with the Israelis must continue, and in this regard I will have a new meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert on June 7,” Abbas told reporters here on Tuesday.A statement from Olmert's office said a meeting was planned for next week, with the date and location yet to be determined.
News of the encounter comes amid weeks of escalating violence in the Gaza Strip that has threatened international efforts to revive the moribund peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.
The latest air strike early on Wednesday targeted the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian and Israeli sources said. It was not immediately clear to which faction the two dead militants belonged.
Abbas and Olmert agreed in March to meet every two weeks, but their talks have been scuppered by internal crises in both Israel and the Palestinian territories and by a resumption of Israeli raids to stop rocket fire from Gaza.
The two last met on April 15.
Abbas has urged Palestinian militants to stop “futile” rocket attacks in a bid to reach a truce with Israel both in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.
“As soon as the factions come to an agreement, we will pass on the offer to the Israeli side for discussion,” Abbas said, referring to separate talks in Cairo between Egyptian security officials and members of the rival Hamas and Fatah factions.Despite Abbas's ceasefire calls, Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal told The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday that armed resistance would eventually drive Israel out of the occupied territories.
“What caused Sharon to leave Gaza, Barak to leave Lebanon in 2000?” he asked.
“And look what's going on in Iraq where the greatest power in the world is facing confusion because of Iraqi resistance.” Olmert told parliament on Tuesday that he planned to address residents of the Gaza Strip in the coming days, but did not specify how he would do so.
He said he wanted to “explain to them that they are the first victims of the fanaticism of some among them, the hate of certain of their organisations and the extremism of leaders ready to sacrifice their blood”.
Israeli troops killed two Hamas militants in a shootout on Tuesday in Gaza and arrested a senior official of Abbas's Fatah party in the occupied West Bank.
Later, two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant movement were killed in an explosion in the central Gaza Strip, medics said. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.
And in the West Bank, Palestinian medical sources said a member of the Fatah-linked armed group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was shot dead during an incursion by Israeli troops at Ramallah on Tuesday.
Another militant, a member of the Islamic Jihad, was killed in a similar raid by Israeli troops in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, according to Palestinian security sources.
The Israeli army said it was carrying out operations in the West Bank but could not confirm the deaths.—AFP
