Abbas accuses Israel of wrecking peace.

From ABC News Online Thursday, August 25, 2005. 8:23pm (AEST) . . .

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has accused Israel of wrecking the prospects of peace after soldiers killed five militants and officials unveiled plans to expand the largest West Bank settlement.

The shootings, Israel's first deadly operation since the historic pullout of settlers from Gaza, came as a British Jew was stabbed to death by a lone Arab in the first fatal Palestinian attack in Jerusalem's Old City in three years.

. . .The five gunmen, one from Islamic Jihad and the rest members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that is loosely affiliated to Mr Abbas's Fatah party, were shot dead when an overnight arrest operation disintegrated into a fierce shoot-out.
Israel said all five belonged to Islamic Jihad and were wanted in connection with a suicide bombing last month that killed four Israelis, claimed by the Islamist faction.

. . .Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had warned on the eve of the Gaza pullout that Israel would respond more harshly than ever against militant violence unless the Palestinian Authority clamped down on armed groups in the future.

In Jerusalem, a young Jewish seminary student from London was killed and his American classmate injured when a Palestinian stabbed them with a kitchen knife in the Old City near Jaffa Gate. The attacker managed to escape.

. . .An Israeli official on Thursday announced plans to build a new police headquarters close to Israel's largest West Bank settlement, after kicking up a storm by appropriating Palestinian land for its huge separation barrier. "The construction project for a police HQ and an access road has obtained all the necessary authorisations and will begin shortly," said a military spokesman responsible for civil affairs in the West Bank. The building will be erected on public land between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement.

. . .Mr Sharon has said that after the Gaza pullout Israel will expand and develop its largest settlement blocs in the West Bank, which the Palestinians want to make the bulk of their future state. A project announced last March aims to build 3,500 new houses in Maale Adumim, which will effectively cut off Palestinian areas of the West Bank from occupied east Jerusalem.
The project has been condemned by the international community.

- AFP