- JABALYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza
Strip (Reuters) -- Palestinians picked through the rubble of dozens of
homes in a sprawling refugee camp on Saturday after Israel ended its most
powerful assault in the Gaza Strip in four years of bloodshed.
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- A spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the
army would return to northern Gaza if there was more Palestinian rocket
fire into Israel, which killed two toddlers on Sept. 29 and triggered the
17-day Israeli offensive.
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- More than 100 Palestinians were killed when Israel sent
in tanks, infantry and armored bulldozers after pledging to hit militants
hard before Sharon's planned removal of settlers and soldiers from Gaza
in 2005.
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- "It is part of a continuing planned series of Israeli
attacks to attempt to bring our people to their knees, and this, of course,
will never be achieved," Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie told
reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
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- Residents in Jabalya, a refugee camp of 100,000 and the
scene of fierce fighting between troops and gunmen, said Israeli tanks
and bulldozers churning through its alleyways had destroyed dozens of homes
and torn up roads and water pipes.
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- "The whole house is rubble and there is no way we
can find anything," said Ezzeya Daher, 50, as hundreds of people picked
through mounds of debris to search for belongings. "Now we are refugees
for a second time."
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- Relaxing its military grip as Palestinians began the
Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, Israel followed up the pullback by reopening
main roads in Gaza that it had blocked at the start of the offensive.
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- FULL CIRCLE
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- For Aisha Abu Al-Jedian, 70, history had come full circle.
Sitting on the wreckage of her home, she said she was a refugee from a
village near what is now the southern Israeli town of Sderot, where the
two children were killed.
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- "Let them (militants) continue to rocket Sderot
until the (Israelis) leave us alone," she said.
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- Palestinian officials estimated more than 100 houses
had been destroyed in northern Gaza. They said it would take two days to
arrive at a final figure.
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- One four-story building in Jabalya had about 200 bullet
holes. Its owner, 70-year-old Abed Abu Warda, said he and 30 members of
his extended family had squeezed into one room to try to avoid the gunfire.
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- Palestinian medics said Israeli forces killed at least
62 militants and 43 other Palestinians believed to be civilians during
the operation. Gunmen killed three Israelis in north Gaza and a Thai farm
worker in a Jewish settlement.
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- "We are determined not to leave Gaza under the hail
of Qassam rocket fire," said Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin. "We
will take all the necessary steps to prevent and reduce as much as possible
the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel."
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- Qassam attacks have complicated Sharon's efforts to overcome
rightist opposition to his plan to remove all 21 Gaza settlements and four
of 120 in the West Bank, starting next May.
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- Polls show most Israelis support a Gaza pullout, which
goes to a parliamentary vote on Oct. 25. Opponents see it as "rewarding
Palestinian terrorism."
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