Fatah leader killed by “Israeli” troops

Source: TheNews, 3-7-2007
RIYADH/JENIN: Several key Saudi clerics this week urged Palestinians not to give up jihad against "Israel", in a sign of their opposition to the US-allied Saudi government's policy of backing President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.
Mohammed Abu el-Heija, a local commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades loosely affiliated to president Mahmud Abbas' Fatah party, was killed in the gunfight in the Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian security sources said. "A Fatah member opened fire on soldiers conducting a routine operation in Jenin, and they returned fire and killed him, wounding another armed Palestinian," claimed an "Israeli" military spokeswoman.
She said the Palestinian was armed with a M-16 assault rifle with a scope. The death bring to 5,773 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP tally.
"Maintain the way of jihad and preaching which has spread among the Muslim Palestinian people. Support it and beware of it easing up, and ward off the danger of those who are laying in wait," said a June 30 statement published on Islamic web sites.
The document was signed by 16 clerics who are leading figures in Saudi Arabia's powerful religious establishment, including Abdel-Rahman al-Barrak and Nasser al-Omar. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites and a leading Muslim power, was the driving force behind an Arab initiative offering "Israel" peace if it returns all the territories it seized during the 1967 Middle East war.
"Israel" and the United States want Saudi Arabia to join public talks between "Israel" and Arab officials on pursuing the peace plan, but Saudi leaders have so far resisted the calls. Saudi authorities have tried to clamp down on charity funding which reaches Hamas.
But the clerics said: "It is our right to help them (Muslims) financially and morally and giving alms is a great moral virtue ... we warn against letting down our brothers in Palestine and in Gaza in particular." Meanwhile, "Israeli" soldiers killed a local Palestinian leader during a shootout in the flashpoint West Bank town of Jenin on Monday, security sources on both sides said.