July 23, 2005 - 4:05 PM

Israeli couple, 2 Gaza gunmen die in new violence

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli couple in an ambush at the Gaza border on Sunday, soon after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ended a mission to shore up a fragile truce before Israel's Gaza pullout.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, under pressure from Jewish ultranationalists who say his plan to quit the occupied land next month rewards the Palestinian uprising, promised a tough response to the shooting at the Kissufim crossing.

"Israel will not make its peace with this terrorism," he told his cabinet. "I made clear to the secretary of state that our response will be of a different kind, using very tough new measures," Sharon said. He did not elaborate.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a day after winning Rice's praise for efforts to improve security, condemned the attack and said he would do his best to prevent any more.

Israel killed two gunmen who carried out the ambush. Three militant groups including al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Abbas's Fatah group, claimed responsibility for it.

In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets to disperse stone-throwing protesters in a village near Hebron, seriously wounding a 12-year-old boy in the head, medics said.

The shootings added to a sense that Rice's trip, hastily arranged after the bloodiest spell since a February truce, had achieved little but to reinforce Washington's stated commitment to the Gaza withdrawal as a possible step to future peacemaking.

A meeting of Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs ended in anger as the two sides failed to make progress on coordinating Israel's planned Gaza pullout.

"Find those who sent the murderers. If you don't we will," Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Youssef at the tense session in Jerusalem, an Israeli defence source said.

"It was clear at the meeting the Israeli side was not serious about cooperating ... on the withdrawal," Tawfiq Abu-Khoussa, Youssef's spokesman, told Reuters.

ARMY SEEKS SPEEDIER PULLOUT

In the Gaza shooting, Palestinian militants fired at a vehicle on its way out of Gush Katif settlement bloc, killing an Israeli couple who had made a weekend visit from Jerusalem.

The couple's car had swerved away from a protected convoy and sped past a security guard who had tried to warn them to halt when the shooting began, the Israeli army said.

Abbas said such attacks did not serve the national interest and said his Palestinian Authority would "exert every possible effort in order to stop these harmful operations".

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the shooting "a senseless act of violence".

With violence continuing, the Israeli army has pressed the government to speed up the Gaza withdrawal, due in mid-August, by removing settlements one after the other rather than in four stages as planned, political sources said.

Streamlining the process could reduce the time needed to remove the settlements from six to four weeks, but may require separate cabinet approval, they said.

In what will be Israel's first removal of settlements from land Palestinians seek for a state, some 8,500 settlers are to leave the 21 settlements in Gaza, home to 1.4 million Palestinians.

A few hundred of more than 230,000 settlers will be removed from four enclaves in the West Bank, where they live alongside 2.4 million Palestinians.

Palestinians welcome the pullout but fear Sharon will strengthen the Israeli hold on the West Bank under what he calls "disengagement" from conflict.

Rice urged Israel on Saturday not to seal off Gaza from the outside world after the pullout, echoing a key Palestinian demand.

Israeli settlers and rightists view the West Bank and Gaza as a biblical birthright.

Dozens marched to the Israeli-Gaza crossing near Gush Katif in a new protest against Israel's entry restrictions to the area to prevent Israeli rightists from buffering the settlers on the eve of the pullout.

Israel's army rebuffed calls from settlers for soldiers to defy orders to remove them. A statement said it was "determined to carry out our mission" and any troops who disobeyed would be dismissed or otherwise disciplined.