Israel Kills 7 Palestinians, Blackmails Hamas Politicians

The Israeli Interior Ministry has further given a Palestinian minister and three MPs from Hamas 30 days to resign their posts or face expulsion from Al-Quds

The seven victims included three members from the Islamic Jihad were killed in the north of the Strip, near the town of Beit Lahiya.

Nine Palestinians were also wounded, according to medical sources and witnesses.

Among the wounded there were two Islamic Jihad fighters and seven others, including two Palestinian journalists and an ambulance driver. Two of the injured were reported in serious condition.

The Israeli military confirmed the Gaza strike and said an infantry unit had been engaged in combat with Islamic Jihad fighters.

It was the first time Israeli forces carried out an operation inside the Gaza Strip since they pulled out of the territory in September last year with previous operations being restricted to air strikes or cross-border shelling.

In separate incidents in the northern West Bank two members of another armed Palestinian faction, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were killed while exchanging gunfire with Israeli forces at Kabatiya, near Tulkarem and the Balata refugee camp in Nablus.

A third man, a member of Islamic Jihad's armed Al-Quds Brigade, died during an Israeli incursion at Kabatiya. Three other Al-Quds militants were wounded.

The combined West Bank and Gaza deaths bring to5 , 074the number of people killed since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September2000 , according to an AFP count. Most of the dead are Palestinians.

Ultimatum

Meanwhile, Israel has given a minister and three MPs from Hamas 30 days to resign their posts or face expulsion from Al-Quds (occupied east Jerusalem), Interior Minister Roni Bar-On said Monday, May29 .

"I told them resign or you will no longer be among us. They've got30 days to make up their minds," Bar-On told the privately run Channel Two television.

The four Hamas members targeted by the ultimatum are Al-Quds Affairs Minister Khaled Abu Arafeh, and MPs Mohammed Abu Teir, Ahmed Attun and Mohammed Totah, added the minister, a member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's centrist Kadima party.

In April, the Israeli government said it was withdrawing the Jerusalem residency cards of the three Hamas MPs.

Abu Arafeh, who was summoned to Al-Quds central police station with the three MPs Monday evening to hear the Israeli ultimatum, hit out at the new measure.

"Withdrawal of residency cards would constitute a new crime by the occupier in its efforts to make Al-Quds Jewish and ethnically cleanse its Palestinian inhabitants," he said.

Last week, Israel also held the minister and MPs Abu Teir and Attun for questioning on suspicion of organizing a demonstration on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City.

Palestinians want Al-Quds, occupied and then annexed by Israel in1967 , to be the capital of their future state.

There are around230 ,000 Palestinians living in the historical city, home to Islam's third holiest shrine Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Former comatose Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon revealed plans last year to link Al-Quds with the large Ma'ale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank by building thousands of new homes.

His then cabinet approved a revised route of the controversial West Bank separation wall, leaving around a quarter of the Palestinian residents in Al-Quds cut off from the rest of the city.

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