Israel fights settlers at W Bank outpost

Israeli forces on Thursday dismantled a Jewish settler outpost after clashing with settlers opposed to leaving West Bank land under a US-bac...

Israeli forces on Thursday dismantled a Jewish settler outpost after clashing with settlers opposed to leaving West Bank land under a US-backed plan for peace with Palestinians.

‘‘Five hundred soldiers and 700 policemen have completed the dismantling of the illegal structures at the Mitzpeh Yizhar outpost,’’ the Army said in a statement.

US singer’s family sues Arafat over shooting

NEW YORK: The family of US singer who was shot dead in an attack on a banquet hall in Israel last year, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Thursday against Palestine President Yasser Arafat and the PLO. The suit, brought under US anti-terrorism laws, was filed in Manhattan federal court and seeks $500 million in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages. The plaintiffs include the common-law wife and children of Aharon Ellis. The family alleged that Abdel Salam Sadek Hassuna, a member of the PLO, carried out the machine-gun attack that was authorised and planned by the defendants. (Reuters)

Twenty-one security personnel were injured and 21 settlers arrested in disturbances occurring shortly after a suicide bomber from a Palestinian militant group hostile to peace steps killed a shopkeeper in northern Israel. Leaders of the nationalist settler movement sought to make Mitzpe Yitzhar a showcase of their Opposition to the troubled peace ‘‘road map’’ and summoned settlers across the West Bank to flock to the caravan site to thwart the evacuation.

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Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, a day after Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas again failed to persuade militants to make a truce with Israel.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell branded Hamas an ‘‘enemy of peace’’ during a trouble-shooting mission on Friday and called for stepped-up international pressure against it and other militant groups. Senior Hamas official Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, who was wounded in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza last week, said in response: ‘‘Colin Powell proved that he is a real slave to the Zionists, a liar and a hypocrite.’’

‘‘The enemy of peace has been Hamas, especially over the last two weeks,’’ Powell said during a trip to salvage a peace ‘‘road map’’. ‘‘As long as they have…a commitment to terror and violence and a desire to destroy the state of Israel, I think this is a problem we have to deal with in its entirety.’’

Palestinian gunmen wounded at least four people in a West Bank shooting on Friday while Powell met Israeli PM Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem, security sources said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, which occurred on a road used by Jewish settlers near the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

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Meanwhile, Israel’s ageing Left-wing icon and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Perez took back the reins of the stumbling Opposition Labour Party on Thursday.