July 25, 2004

IDF undercover units assassinate local AMB mbrs. Hani Awayda, Mahdi Tanbur in Tulkarm, opening fire on them as they sit in an outdoor caf´e, also killing 4 bystanders, wounding a 3d AMB mbr. IDF helicopters rocket a Gaza City building (the IDF claims it is a Hamas workshop, Palestinians say it is the home of a Hamas mbr.) twice during the day, wounding 4 Palestinians, destroying the building. The IDF also expands operations in Bayt Hanun, searching homes and a medical clinic (temporarily detaining some patients and staff), bulldozing 300 dunams; fatally shoots a 50-yr.-old mentally handicapped Palestinian woman who enters a closed military zone nr. Rafah (the same woman was wounded in a similar incident in the area on 9/8/02); begins digging a trench around the Rafah border crossing; fires on residential areas of Bayt Rima, Khan Yunis; bulldozes 5 farm buildings, 5 dunams of land nr. Khan Yunis. Palestinians fire a mortar, an antitank rocket at Gaza’s Neve Dekalim settlement, slightly wounding 6 Israeli children. Jewish settler leaders rally 10,000s of Israelis (organizers say 200,000, police say 70,000; mostly settlers, ultra-Orthodox) to form a human chain stretching 56-mi. fr. Nisanit settlement in n. Gaza to the Western Wall in Jerusalem to protest plans for an Israeli withdrawal fr. Gaza. (JAZ, VOI, VOP, YA 7/25 in WNC 7/27; HA, MM, NYT, PCHR, WP, WT 7/26; VOP 7/26 in WNC 7/28; PR 7/28; PCHR 7/29)