Military

DATE=10/22/2004

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ISRAEL / PALESTINIANS (L-ONLY)

NUMBER=2-319834

BYLINE=LARRY JAMES

DATELINE=JERUSALEM

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

HEADLINE: Israeli Rocket Attacks Target Militants in Gaza

INTRO: Israeli aircraft struck at Palestinian targets in the northern Gaza Strip overnight. VOA's Larry James reports from Jerusalem the strike occurred just hours after an Israeli missile killed two prominent Hamas militants in Gaza.

TEXT: The Israeli military says the target of the most recent attack was a building used to make and store weapons. Palestinian witnesses say no one was injured in the attack on the home of Amer Qarmout, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committee, an umbrella group for militants in Gaza. The group had said it had fired a homemade rocket into the nearby Israeli town of Sderot earlier Thursday.

The Israeli strike came just hours after an Israeli aircraft killed one of Israel's most wanted militants and an aid. Adnan al-Ghoul, the number two man in Hamas' military wing, was killed along with a lower-ranking militant when two Israeli missiles fired from an unpiloted aircraft struck the car they were riding in. Hamas vowed retaliation would come and that it would be "painful."

Hamas called Adnan al-Ghoul a top bomb-maker who had

masterminded the development of the homemade Qassam rocket

militants frequently fire into southern Israel. He had been in hiding for a number of years following several Israeli attempts to assassinate him.

Israel Radio says more than 10 rockets struck near the Neve

Dekalim settlement in the Gaza Strip Thursday causing some

damage but no injuries. Israel launched a more than two-week long military operation in Gaza to stop such attacks. More than one thousand Palestinians, dozens of them civilians, died in the Israeli attacks.

Violence has rocked Gaza on a regular basis since Israeli

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans earlier this year to dismantle all Jewish settlements from the area and

withdraw completely from the area. Israel is determined not to appear to have withdrawn as the result of Palestinian resistance. Palestinians want to claim the Israeli pullout as a victory.

Mr. Sharon is to present his withdrawal plan to the Israeli

parliament next Tuesday. Sharon aides say they believe they have the support to win the vote although concerns remain about the fractures within the prime minister's Likud Party that could spell trouble ahead. In all, three votes will be required before the plan can be implemented as planned beginning next summer.

Mr. Sharon says Israel cannot afford to maintain the Israeli presence in Gaza where some eight thousand Jewish settlers live surrounded by an estimated one-point-three million Palestinians. Settlers see the withdrawal as a betrayal of their once strongest advocate of the settler movement.

NEB/LDJ/RH