Palestinian gunmen storm Israeli border

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian gunmen broke through Israel's heavily fortified Gaza border and battled troops inside Israel for about two hours Saturday in a failed attempt to abduct an Israeli soldier. One of the raiders was killed.

It was the first cross-border incursion since militants killed two soldiers and abducted a third a year ago.

The Israel military said troops shot dead one of the raiders. Palestinians said another three escaped back to Gaza unharmed.

The Islamic Jihad group said it carried out Saturday's attack, near the Kissufim crossing between Gaza and Israel, along with the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.

"The aim of the operation was to withdraw with the soldier in captivity," said Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad. "But the participation of Israeli helicopters prevented that."

Israeli Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant said the quick reaction of the soldiers "prevented an attack, apparently a kidnap."

On June 25 last year Palestinian militants killed two soldiers and snatched one near the Kerem Shalom frontier post, 15 miles south of the site of Saturday's violence. The abducted soldier is still missing.

A five-month truce between the Gaza militants and Israel collapsed in May when a string of Palestinian rocket attacks into southern Israel triggered Israeli air strikes in response.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been scheduled to meet in the West Bank this week to discuss the latest round of violence, but the Palestinians called it off, accusing Israel of rejecting all their proposals in preparatory talks.

Israel will only talk to Abbas, shunning the Palestinian government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, the Islamic group behind the deaths of scores of Israelis in suicide bomb attacks, which is pledged to Palestinian rule all of historical Palestine, including present-day Israel.

Hamas has shrugged off international demands it renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist, but a senior official Saturday took a softer line, saying only Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

Hamas was founded on a pledge to seek Israel's destruction, but some in the movement have moderated their stance as part of the coalition with the more pragmatic Fatah.

The Hamas-Fatah government's platform calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

"Now there is one team, one program, one united government," Moussa Abu Marzouk, a deputy to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, said in an interview published Saturday in the Hamas-linked "Palestine." newspaper. "So there is a big chance to reach the goal we agreed upon at this stage, which is a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem," he said.

Despite Abu Marzouk's message of Palestinian unity, there was a fresh outbreak of fighting Friday night between Hamas and Fatah loyalists in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, wounding eight people, Palestinian security officials said.

This week marks the anniversary of the 1967 war and Palestinians and foreign activists held a rally at Israel's West Bank separation barrier north of Jerusalem Saturday to protest against four decades of Israeli control.

"We tell the world that 40 years of occupation is enough," said one of the protesters, Allam Jarar, 56. "This occupation must be stopped, and the Palestinian people must be given the right to self-determination."