ISRAEL: Five Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy hit in the head by a bullet, were killed yesterday in an extensive Israeli military incursion into northern Gaza.
The raid, which began before dawn and was still under way last night, came on the day residents of the Occupied Territories observed the anniversary of their displacement at the time of Israel's creation in 1948, known as the "Nakba".
Violence has continued almost unabated since the visit earlier this week by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, aimed at launching the road map peace plan.
The latest bloodshed comes just two days before the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, is set to meet the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, in one of the highest-level meetings between leaders on both sides since the intifada began.
Troops, backed by tanks and helicopters, moved into Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, in what the army said was an operation aimed at preventing the firing of rudimentary Qassam rockets from the strip into towns in southern Israel. In the course of the raid, however, militants continued to fire the rockets.
The dead also included two 15-year-old boys, and two gunmen killed in firefights with Israeli troops. Palestinian doctors accused the army of blocking ambulances from reaching the wounded for up to four hours. They said the 12-year-old boy, Muhammad Zaneen, died on the way to hospital after having been deprived of immediate medical care. The army denied ambulances had been prevented from evacuating the wounded.
In the course of the day, thousands demonstrated in the streets of Gaza to mark the Nakba, or "catastrophe", as the Palestinians refer to the 1948 war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were forced to leave their homes.
At noon, a three-minute siren was sounded in the territories, in an ironic duplication of an Israeli Memorial Day custom, to commemorate the Jewish state's fallen soldiers. Motorists brought their cars to a halt and marchers flashed V-for-victory signs. In Gaza City, a defiant message blared through a loudspeaker: "They said the old die and children forget - we will never forget and we will return."
The return of Palestinian refugees was a key element in a strident Nakba-day speech by Mr Yasser Arafat, broadcast from his office compound in Ramallah.
He sounded an uncompromising message on the right of return for refugees, which has been one of the most implacable issues in the Mideast conflict. "Every Palestinian refugee yearns for the day when he will embrace our homeland - Palestine! Palestine! Palestine! In the name of Allah, those who were expelled from their homes will return to them," he said.
Attempts by the Americans to coax the two sides into taking initial steps outlined in the road map, have so far been met by a mutual outburst of Israeli-Palestinian recrimination.
Mr Sharon has presented some 15 reservations on the blueprint to the Americans.