Ayalon, who is running on the Labor party ticket in the upcoming general elections, said he wants a comprehensive peace settlement with the Palestinians even under a Hamas leadership.

"I'd be willing to negotiate with Hamas if the organization accepts the idea of a two-state solution," the Times quoted him as saying.

Ayalon told the newspaper that he believes Israel should establish an "axis of pragmatism" with the regional countries that have full diplomatic relations with Israel - Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.

"This is the whole idea - to create this pragmatic axis which will be supported by the European Union and the international community," he said.

'Abbas is weak'

"Seventy percent of those who voted for Hamas were not Hamas believers but voted against the corruption in the Palestinian Authority," he said. "If we establish this axis it will break Hamas and we will see the pragmatist forces among the Palestinians."

Referring to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Ayalon said "I like the music of Abbas, his words, but not his actions. I think he is a weak leader.

"He's unable to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad."

As to the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ayalon said "When it comes to his best advice on the Palestine question, however, he admitted it was a family affair. "If I learnt something about the conflict with the Palestinians, it is what my wife understood 30 years ago and tried in vain to teach me: Jews will only be safe when Palestinians have hope."

The Israeli military continued to shell areas of the Gaza Strip, and conducted twenty-nine incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Houses were raided and thirty-eight Palestinian civilians were arrested. At least one house was occupied by Israeli soldiers and turned into a military post.

The centre released its weekly report on Thursday and listed the military violations in the Occupied Territories during the week.

The report added that the Israeli military has continued to undertake a total siege of the Occupied Territories, especially in the West Bank. The Jordan Valley remains separated from the rest of the West Bank, and the occupied East Jerusalem continues to be isolated.

Palestinians under the age of forty-five have been denied access to the al-Aqsa mosque. Palestinian residents, including elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, have been prohibited from travelling from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. The Israeli army arrested eight Palestinian civilians at checkpoints in the West Bank.

The Israeli military continued to construct the Separation Wall in the West Bank, and razed area of land in Hebron and Tulkarem. A house was demolished in Jerusalem, and dozens of families living in sixteen communities near Hebron were isolated by the wall. Force was used against Palestinian civilians demonstrating against the construction of the Wall.

Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property in the Occupied Territories. A Palestinian child was injured in an attack by Israeli settlers in Hebron, and the Israeli military demolished a house in Beit Eksa village.

The centre is calling on all signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention (which includes the state of Israel) to protect the Palestinian people from these violations by Israel of the Convention, and asks those countries to take appropriate measures to ensure Israel's compliance with the Convention.

The centre also calls on the International Red Cross to increase its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and to facilitate visitation of detainees by their parents. In addition, they have called on the international community to enforce the ruling of the International Court of Justice ruling declaring the Israeli Annexation Wall illegal.

The report concludes by saying that "any political settlement not based on international human rights law and humanitarian law cannot lead to a peaceful and just solution of the Palestinian question."

Qassam's brother Rami said that Qassam was allowed a phone call with his father when he was in the hospital.

Qassam told his father that an officer, other than the interrogator, entered the interrogation room and yelled at him "You are Qassam Abu Baker? do we have another Qassam in Yabad?" said Rami.

Apparently, the soldier referred the home-made Qassam shells that the Palestinian resistance groups fire at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip.

The boy added that when the officer left he intentionally pushed him at the door and strongly slammed the door, cutting off Qassam's finger which happened to be between the hinges of the door. He said the interrogator was quarreling with the other officer who chopped his finger and heard him saying, "this is wrong."

The boy was transferred to Affoula hospital in northern for treatment, and underwent a successful operation to reattach his finger.

Abu Baker was arrested earlier this month when the soldiers invaded the village and operated there; Abu Baker and another child identified as Murad Kilani were arrested.

The two children were transferred to Salem Israeli Prison for interrogation, and were transferred later on to Ofer prison.

The boy told a lawyer who visited him, that he is suffering sever pain because the clinic at Ofer prison lacks appropriate drugs.

The family expressed concerns over the health of their child saying that his rights have been violated, and called on human rights organizations to intervene to get him released.

In English, a "four-letter word" is a rude expletive. It is a vulgar description of a sexual act or organ, and an educated person will not use it.

Now it appears that in the Hebrew language, too, there is a four-letter word, which a decent person will not use, especially not in an election campaign. A (politically) correct person will avoid it at all costs.

That word is Peace (which in Hebrew consists of four letters).

This week, the election propaganda moved from the street to radio and TV. Israeli law accords every list of candidates a minimum of free broadcasting time (10 minutes on TV), with parties represented in the outgoing Knesset getting additional minutes according to their size. No other election broadcasts on TV or radio are allowed.

As a result, election propaganda has been taken out of the hands of the politicians and turned over to the "experts" - advertising people, copywriters and assorted "strategists". This is a cynical bunch. Like lawyers, most advertising people are mercenaries. They may serve a left-wing party today and sell their services to a right-wing one tomorrow. Their personal opinions do not count; business is business.

When an advertising expert plans an election campaign, his aim is not to explain the programme of the party that hired him, but to attract voters. He is more a circus juggler than a preacher.

Election propaganda is like a gown: it should emphasize the attractive features of its owner and hide the less attractive ones. The difference is that the advertising expert can invent limbs that do not exist and cut off limbs that do, according the demands of the market.

One of the major headaches of the propagandist is that his candidates may speak up, God forbid, and expose their real views, thus spoiling the show. As a well-known advertising expert told me: "Selling a politician is like selling toothpaste, with one important difference - toothpaste doesn't talk!"

As a result, the election propaganda does not say much about the real aims of the leaders and their parties. One can assume in advance that most of the content of the broadcasts is fraudulent. If a commercial enterprise distributed such a mendacious prospectus on the stock exchange, it would be indicted.

Does this mean that the election propaganda is not interesting? On the contrary, one can learn a lot from it. It does not reflect the real positions of the parties, but it does reflect public opinion. More precisely: public opinion as it appears to the experts, who conduct daily polls, listen to focus groups and such.

On this background, it is worthwhile to examine the broadcasts.

In one of his mysteries, Sherlock Holmes observed that the solution lay in the curious incident of the dog in the night. "But the dog did nothing in the night-time!" his assistant exclaimed. "That is the curious incident!" Sherlock replied.

The curious incident in the present election campaign is a word that does not appear at all: the word "peace".

A stranger will not understand its absence. After all, Israel is in a perpetual state of war. The broadcasts themselves are full of frightening Hamas parades. The fear of suicide bombings is stronger in Israel than any other fear. Logic says that a party that promises peace will reach the heights of popularity. Yet, wonder of wonders, no important party is claiming this crown for itself. More than that, no important party so much as mentions the word peace in its broadcasts.

Kadima speaks about Hope, Hope, Hope - without spelling out what kind of hope, hope for what. It speaks of "Might", and even of a "Chance for a Political Move". Peace? Nyet.

Kadima's masterpiece is a TV clip which harnesses to its cause the whole crew - Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Begin, Sharon and Rabin. It shows Herzl announcing the Zionist idea, Ben-Gurion founding the State of Israel, Begin making peace with Egypt, Sharon crossing the Suez Canal in the Yom-Kippur [Ramadan] war, and Rabin making peace with - King Hussein.

King Hussein? Wait a minute. Didn't Rabin sign an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization and shake hands with Yasser Arafat? Wasn't that the high point of his life? Wasn't he awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that? Wasn't the peace with Hussein almost an afterthought, since Hussein had already been an unofficial ally of Israel for more than 40 years? But Kadima has decided that it must not show Arafat at any price. It could be accused, God forbid, of striving for peace with the Palestinians!

Amir Peretz of Labour might have been tempted to speak about peace, if his handlers had not shut him up in time. He feels much safer talking about children without food and oldsters without pensions.

Likud, of course, does not speak about peace. Binyamin Netanyahu is at his best when scaring people. For this purpose he went down to the junkyard and retrieved some used generals, who testify that Hamas and the Palestinian [National] Authority pose an existential threat to Israel, much as the frightful Iranian bomb. Only the Great Bibi [Netanyahu] knows how to deal with them. Peace? Don't make me laugh!

Most amusing is Meretz, the party headed by Yossi Beilin, originator of the Geneva Initiative. Its main broadcast shows men and women pushing slips of paper into the cracks of the Western Wall while voicing their most ardent wish. There is a woman yearning for an academic degree, a man who wants to marry another man, a grandpa who longs for money in order to buy a present for his grandson, a Christian woman who hankers for recognition as a Jewess, a mother who desires to send her son to kindergarten, a woman pining for a divorce. And what is the one thing nobody yearns for, longs for, pines for according to the Meretz propaganda people?

You guessed it: That four-letter word again.

What does all this say about the Israeli public, 2006?

It says that the huge majority of Israeli Jews do not believe in peace. Peace is being conceived as a dream, something that has nothing to do with reality. A party that speaks about peace brands itself as living in a fantasy world. Worse, it may be suspected of "Arab-loving". What could be more disastrous?

So what do Israelis believe in? They want a Jewish State, with as large a Jewish majority as possible. That is agreed among all the Jewish parties. They believe in fixing the final borders of Israel unilaterally, without speaking with those Palestinians. The Palestinians, as everybody knows, have just elected Hamas and want to throw us into the sea.

What borders? Ehud Olmert is gradually disclosing what he has in mind. His map will not surprise the readers of this column. His Greater Israel includes all the territory trapped between the Green Line and the Separation Wall; and in addition the Jordan Valley; Greater Jerusalem, which includes the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement and the territory between it and the city (but giving up some densely populated Arab neighbourhoods); the settlement blocs of Ariel, Alfei-Menasheh, Modi'in Illit and Gush Etzion; and "special security areas". He takes care not to draw an actual map, so there is no certainty about the borders of the settlement blocs. But he certainly aims at annexing more than half of the West Bank.

For Netanyahu, that is, of course, blatant treason, a shameful surrender to the Arabs. In his broadcasts, he denounces Olmert's borders as "borders inviting terrorism'. The Likud does actually draw a map, in which the Wall moves right to the centre of the West Bank.

Labour and Meretz agree in principle to the annexation of the settlement blocs, but they do not publish maps. They mention half-heartedly some undefined swaps of territory. No wonder, since they dream, almost visibly, of joining the coalition under Olmert that will probably be set up after the election. The map of the coalition is more important than the map of annexations.

And peace? Shhhhhhh

Come Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Tom Lantos and offer a bill that was almost surely on Gazit's mind when he wrote, a bill that could be a poster-child for knee-jerk reaction. Ros-Lehtinen is chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia of the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, and Lantos is its ranking minority member.

What they have offered, and what at least 70 of their colleagues have by now endorsed, is a draconian measure that would forbid any and all contact between the American government and Hamas - and similarly, between the United States and any Palestinian government in which any member of Hamas has any part at all. According to the language of the bill, for example, if the Palestinian Authority were to employ a postman who is a member of Hamas, any and all relationship between any American government agency and the P.A. would have to cease. No contact.

The bill, as written, is a piece of meddlesome foolishness, but it's exactly the sort of thing that most members of Congress are reluctant to oppose for fear of seeming "anti-Israel." That's been the case in Congress for many years now, and the result has done Israel no service at all.

To be fair, not all those who support such bills do so out of fear. Some do it out of love, be it a love of Israel or a love of posturing. But fear predominates, and the proximate source of that fear is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which typically chooses to be the enforcer of precisely that kind of crude pro-Israelism.

In the case at hand, the endorsement of the Ros-Lehtinen-Lantos bill is reportedly the fulcrum of this year's annual Aipac conference and it will be the major agenda item as Aipac's delegates move from their conference to Capitol Hill to lobby their representatives.

Those who follow the news out of Israel closely may raise an eyebrow or two over this, since we now have a more authoritative voice than even Gazit's calling into question the notion that the way to make progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to ignore such subtle changes in policy and behavior that may develop in the weeks and months ahead. I refer to the voice of the acting prime minister of Israel and the very probable winner of the prime ministership in his own right in Israel's March 28 elections.

Ehud Olmert is now on record as saying that Hamas does not pose a strategic threat to Israel. He has said that Israel will be resolute, tough in its dealings with a P.A. "contaminated" by terrorism - but that at the same time it will remain open to signs of change.

And we have also Amir Peretz, Labor's candidate for Israel's top job, who said after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo last week, "We must not push the Palestinians into the arms of the extremists." He called for Israel to establish a "moderate axis" of countries intent on strengthening the moderate forces in the P.A.

The bill being put forward by Ros-Lehtinen and Lantos will have none of it. The change it demands before there can be any softening of the American position is comprehensive, across the board. It demands, for example, that the P.A. "publicly acknowledge[s] Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state," a condition that was not part of the Oslo agreements between Israel and the PLO nor of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. To demand that before there can be talks, before there can even be contacts, the P.A. must endorse Zionism is to engage in make-believe, even farce. It is a recipe for stalemate.

Clarity is here required: Hamas has bathed in evil. It is an offense to Islam. Its charter is an abomination. It has cost Israel dear. Its most recent, post-election statements provide little or no assurance that it is prepared to moderate its fundamental (and fundamentalist) position regarding Israel. But: No one reliably knows about the real differences within Hamas, nor can anyone say with any confidence how the responsibilities of governing may affect its worldview.

Hamas includes fundamentalist clerics and may well include pragmatists also. No one knows what the outcome will be if the clerics and the pragmatists move in separate directions. Does not wisdom dictate that some doors be kept open, or at least ajar, for contacts with those in the Hamas camp who seem amenable to meaningful conversation?

Shlomo Gazit again, this in an OpEd piece last week in The Boston Globe: "All of us [Israel, the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia] should make it known that we are prepared to meet with any [P.A.] leadership that is ready to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian agreement." That is also, Olmert has implied, Israel's position.

That is what Ros-Lehtinen and Lantos, with Aipac's full support, would prohibit the United States from doing. And that's pro-Israel?

In Middle East policy, America ignores injustice, because religion-based passions here at home override even vital national interests. Our bias is not controlled by government officials but by two peculiar, politically powerful religious communities -- fundamentalist Christianity, on one hand, and on the other an extreme element of Judaism.

Together, they burden our country year after year with an Israel-centric foreign policy that is disastrous to America's vital interests. Both groups have a deep-seated, passionate attachment to the State of Israel, no matter how outrageous its behavior becomes. Both are represented powerfully in Washington and exert a suffocating level of influence throughout America's political system, as well as in almost every other part of our society.

This influence is abetted unwittingly by suicide bombers, professed Muslims who engage in reprehensible violence mainly as a barbaric protest against foreign occupation of their land. In doing so, they defy the rules of Islam and Christianity by taking their lives and the lives of innocent people and thus frustrate the efforts of people who define Islam correctly as a generous, tolerant and peaceful religion.

Nearly one-half of the American people harbor false, ugly images of Islam and want the civil liberties of U.S. Muslims curtailed. Most Americans also seem oblivious to the peril before all of us. They are unaware of the flagrant bias in our policies and the price we pay for this bias.

Despite the wonders of the Information Age, few know the truth about how our flawed policies in the Middle East are put in place. Almost everyone who knows the truth is afraid to speak out. This unofficial but effective censorship is deadly. It has unwittingly has led us step by step into deep trouble, even war.

Of the two religious communities cited above, the older and more skillful one is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The newer but much larger one is the fundamentalist Christian community that is guided by a controversial interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation.

AIPAC consists almost exclusively of Zionists, activists whose behavior is actually disapproved by the majority of U.S. Jews. My book, "They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby", details the origin, history and tactics of AIPAC.

Ultra-Orthodox Zionists believe their messiah will not arrive until Greater Israel -- Biblical Israel -- comes into being. This means the incorporation of the entirety of the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel proper. In both Israel and the United States, such Zionists exert great political power. They receive U.S. financing, both public and private, and are the primary force that establishes and expands the illegal Jewish settlements that now consign Palestinians to isolated enclaves like those that once existed in apartheid South Africa.

Christian fundamentalists are not as tightly organized as AIPAC, but they consist of more than 50 million members. They are well disciplined on election days and have attained great political power in recent years. They were prominent in Bush's presidential campaigns.

The two communities make strange bedfellows. Judaic doctrine makes no mention of Jesus Christ. Fundamentalist Christian doctrine proclaims that when Christ returns to earth, all Jews will either be converted to Christianity or be destroyed. The two groups are bound tightly together today by an immediate interest -- the survival of a strong, expanding Israel as an essential precondition for the arrival on earth of their separate messiahs.

Together, the two communities control U.S. policy in the Middle East. They are so powerful that Congress dutifully approves massive aid to Israel every year with no debate whatever. No mention is made of Israel's continuing record of destroying Palestinian society through military conquest, assassinations and wholesale destruction of lives, homes and means of livelihood. On Capitol Hill, there is no mention of the grave harm this bias causes to U.S. national interests.

Year after year, our government enables Israel to defy the rules of international law and the UN Charter with impunity. Due to media bias, few Americans are aware of this scofflaw conduct, but most other people worldwide, especially Muslims, follow this abuse with mounting anti-American fury. The rage over recently published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is thought by many observers to be a spontaneous eruption of anger among Muslims toward the West. Some anger may be spontaneous, but most is grounded in the long-festering bitterness over U.S. complicity in the plight of mostly-Muslim Palestine. In President Bush's campaign against terrorism, he has failed to recognize that 9/11's real Ground Zero was never Manhattan or the Pentagon. It was always Palestine and remains so today.

What motivated the 9/11 assault against America? It was a grisly payback for America's complicity in Israel's bloody assault on Arabs years ago. In several televised statements, Osama bin Laden cited as motives for 9/11 U.S. complicity in Israel's 1982 bombing of Beirut, as well as our subsequent role in Israel's destruction of Palestinian society.

Using U.S.-supplied armor, bombs and bullets, Israel killed more than 18,000 innocent Arabs in Beirut. This provoked worldwide anti-American fury that intensified when Congress immediately voted funds to restore the inventory of munitions Israeli forces consumed in the massacre. I know. I was a Member of Congress when the vote occurred.

The 9/11 calamity and our costly, stumbling wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq are the ugly off-springs of our longstanding complicity. Worldwide resentment against Israel and the United States has deepened with each passing year. President Bush's failure to recognize and redress these Arab grievances is the main reason for the lethal insurgency now underway against our forces in Iraq. This failure quickens our fateful pace as we plunge toward the precipice of a widespread war over religion.

Our best way to pull back from the precipice is to pull U.S. military forces and contractors out of Iraq. Sadly, Bush shows no sign of changing course. Our peril deepened in the wake of 9/11 when Bush received bad advice from Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, my colleagues years ago in the House of Representatives. Overreacting to 9/11, they convinced the president that the assault made him all-powerful as commander-in-chief and that he had a free rein to ignore Congress and tradition and could change U.S. policies as he wished.

Bush immediately acted the part, proclaiming his right to commit acts of war any place he alone found a threat to our security. He scrapped national sovereignty, the bedrock of the nation state, rammed through a panicky Congress an unpatriotic Patriot Act and pledged to maintain U.S. forces and foreign bases at a level sufficient to police the world.

He initiated inconclusive, stumbling wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now hints at an assault on Iran. Syria may be next.

I am not an isolationist. The world needs policing, but no single nation state should attempt that role. It is the proper job for a multinational organization which our government should be helping to create. I use plain language. Perhaps what I say troubles you deeply. In these perilous I must speak the truth as I believe it to be.

How did we get in this mess? How do the religious lobbies maintain this tight grip on U.S. policy?

They use America's political system with great skill. They vote. They take part in political campaigns. They contribute generously to candidates who do their bidding and against those who do not. Their most powerful instrument of intimidation is the reckless charge of anti- Semitism. I know the sting. It works. It makes people who know the truth about our complicity cower in silence.

Few Americans know -- but all should know -- of the silent but effective support of Israel that exists within our government bureaucracy. Almost every office in the executive branch and for congressional committees that has any role in Middle East policy formulation has at least one staff member who takes the personal responsibility of protecting the interests of Israel as each piece of paper passes through his or her desk. My book is replete with examples. Our government is truly Israeli-occupied territory, but few citizens are aware of this reality.

Today's bloody mess started a half-century ago on Capitol Hill when the lobby for Israel first promoted a heavy bias in U.S. policy in the Middle East. Its activities thoroughly intimidated our political institutions and effectively stifled debate. I know firsthand. I was a Member of Congress for 22 years and have watched developments closely ever since.

By silencing dissent, the pro-Israel lobby intimidates not just the Congress but the entire nation. Former Ambassador George W. Ball spoke accurately when he said that Congress behaves like trained poodles, jumping through hoops held by lobbyists for Israel. Senators Charles Percy and Adlai Stevenson and Representatives Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard and myself are among those defeated at the polls by candidates heavily financed by pro-Israel forces. Only McKinney later returned to Congress.

Nationally, not just on Capitol Hill, the State of Israel is treated as sacrosanct. It is rare when a word critical of Israel is expressed even in private conversation. This is true in the media, academia, social circles and business communities. Almost everyone, afraid to speak out, has an excuse for silence. Lobby intimidation even suffocates free speech in houses of worship. It should surprise no one that Congress, with hardly a murmur of protest, recently approved resolutions saluting the prime minister of Israel for building high walls and fences that keep Palestinians penned up on their own land like cattle.

I believe 9/11 would not have occurred if the U.S. had refused to support Israel's humiliation and destruction of Palestinian society. Any president of the past 38 years could have brought peace to the Middle East by suspending all aid until Israel withdrew from Arab land it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Why did Bush order the invasion of Iraq? Israeli footprints are found every step of the way. U.S. General Anthony Zinni, once Bush's special emissary to the Middle East, spoke the truth recently when he said Israel and oil are the widely accepted reasons for the invasion. I will add that almost everyone knows that Israel was the stronger of the two reasons. The war in Iraq was for Israeli interests, not American. If we commit acts of war against Iran or Syria, these too will be mainly to help Israel.

The raging insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq is linked directly to the plight of the Palestinians nearby. How can we expect Iraqis to trust our promise of freedom for them when a few miles away we maintain our abject, decades-long complicity in Israel's denial of freedom for Palestinians?

The best way to stop both the insurgency in Iraq and the gathering storm of Christendom versus Islam is to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel vacates illegal settlements it has established throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem and withdraws from Arab territory it has held illegally since June 1967.

In Iraq, we should announce plans for a total withdrawal of the U.S. military and contractor personnel by an early date, stating clearly that the only units exempt from withdrawal would be any that are expressly requested by the Iraqi government and the UN Security Council.

These two announcements would sweep away the dark clouds of religious war and quickly dampen the Iraqi insurgency. They would be greeted with worldwide rejoicing as heralding a dramatic return of U.S. policy to the high ground it once occupied.

Is the scene hopeless? Of course not. We are on the eve of a new election cycle. Every one of us has the opportunity -- yes, the responsibility -- to speak up at political gatherings, ask precise questions of candidates and demand precise answers. We can write letters to the editor and engage directly in partisan campaigns.

We must reject preemptive war as an instrument of public policy. Supporters of war turn to scripture for misleading inspiration. Let us take our inspiration from Deuteronomy, where God instructed Moses with these words: "Seek justice, only justice." The peril is immediate and great, but it is not too late for justice.

I am 84. I've been on the firing line for justice in U.S. policy in the Middle East for nearly half my life. I do not regret a minute of that long endeavor. I will never give up. Will you help?

-Paul Findley was a Member of Congress, 1961-83, and is the author of five books, the latest being "Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam". He resides in Jacksonville, Illinois.

In the same vein, the Likud platform argued that the so-called roadmap peace plan, in which a Palestinian state would live alongside Israel in peace, was a non-starter.

"The continued outline of the roadmap is impossible in light of the absence of a legitimate partner," it said.

Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhari said Netanyahu's comments prove that "a war is being carried out against our people, and our programme is to resist to obtain our rights".

Israel, the United States and the European Union have all conditioned any dealings with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority on its renouncing violence, recognising Israel and honouring past agreements with the Jewish state.

And so has moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party has so far refused to agree to join a coalition government.

With Abbas having given Hamas two more weeks to modify its programme and put together a new government, the group was to hold a final round of talks with the various parties, including Fatah, on Monday.

Farhat Assaad, a Hamas spokesperson, said the group would present its own government by next weekend if no deal is reached.

Foreign Office sources said the UK had contacted the office of the Palestinian President four times since Friday to ask him to "allay our security concerns for the welfare of our monitors".

When the President's office failed to respond, the decision to withdraw the monitors was taken "because we have a duty of care for our monitors" , said the sources.

The monitors are there under an agreement brokered in 2002, to observe conditions in the jail, but the Foreign Office stressed the welfare and security of the prisoners was entirely a matter for the Palestinian Authority.

Those held in the prison include the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Saadat, said to be the mastermind behind the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister in 2001.

Some prisoners were eventually marched out of the jail by Israeli forces, but others remained defiant inside, including Saadat.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said "the American and the British side bear full responsibility for any harm to the lives" of the prisoners.

He said the decision by the UK and US monitors to withdraw "is a grave violation of agreements reached in 2002".

As protesters rampaged through Gaza City, the Foreign Office also warned Britons to stay away from Jericho. Britons are already told not to travel to the Gaza Strip.

Israel said it mounted the raid because the foreign monitors had been withdrawn and blamed the Palestinians for breaching agreements about the prisoners' custody.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "It has been confirmed that there are no local or UK staff in the British Council offices. They were escorted out much earlier."

As TV pictures showed flames within the building and gunmen outside, the spokesman added: "The Palestinian security forces are in attendance but the pictures speak for themselves."

The Foreign Office said that Britain repeatedly warned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that it would withdraw its monitors from the prison.

"It's quite clear that the security of that prison and the security of the monitors was the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. We made clear to them what we expected them to do, we gave them a warning."

Mr Straw announced the decision to withdraw the monitors in a written Commons statement today.

He said: "The UK and the US have repeatedly raised our concerns over the security of our monitors with the Palestinian Authority and urged them to meet their obligations under the Ramallah agreement.

"Unfortunately, there has been no improvement. We therefore issued a joint US/UK letter to President Abbas on 8 March 2006.

"This letter said that we would have to terminate our involvement with the mission if the Palestinian Authority did not immediately either fully comply with the Ramallah Agreement (which sets out monitoring arrangements) and make substantive improvements to the security of the monitors or come to a new agreement with the Government of Israel.

"As required by the Ramallah Agreement we informed the Israeli Authorities that we were delivering a letter in these terms.

"The Palestinian Authority has consistently failed to meet its obligations under the Ramallah Agreement. Ultimately the safety of our personnel has to take precedence.

"It is with regret that I have to inform the House that these conditions have not been met and we have terminated our involvement with the mission today, March 14."

The Foreign Office also released the letter sent by the UK Consul General in Jerusalem, John Jenkins, and his US counterpart, Jake Walles, to President Abbas on 8 March.

The letter says the Palestinian Authority has "never fully complied" with the agreement which established the mission.

"While the six detainees - Fuad Shobaki, Ahmad Sa'adat, Iyad Gholmi, Hamdi Qur'an, Majdi Rimawi and Basel al-Asmar - are held in continuous custody at the Jericho prison, the Palestinian Authority has consistently failed to comply with core provisions of the Jericho monitoring arrangements regarding visitors, cell searches, telephone access and correspondence," it said.

"Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority has failed to provide secure conditions for the US and UK personnel working at the Jericho Prison.

"Repeated demarches by our governments to the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority have not resulted in improved compliance with the Jericho monitoring arrangements."

And in a reference to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, the letter added: "The pending handover of governmental power to a political party that has repeatedly called for the release of the Jericho detainees also calls into question the political sustainability of the monitoring mission."

The letter adds that, if the mission is to continue, conditions at the prison must either be brought into line with the arrangements or the Palestinian Authority must establish a new arrangement on the detainees with the Israeli government.

If neither happens, "we will have to terminate our involvement with the Jericho monitoring arrangements and withdraw our monitors with immediate effect", the letter warns.

Sir David Green, director general of the British Council, said the building had been "very badly damaged".

"Mid-morning Gaza time a group of masked gunmen came into the building and started firing shots in our information centre," he said.

"We called military operations and within three minutes a large group from the presidential guard arrived to take charge of the situation and, in fact, get the situation under control.

"At which point all our staff vacated the building."

Sir David said on BBC Radio 4's World at One: "Then a larger number of demonstrators, many of them armed, arrived at the building as I understand it the presidential guard could not maintain control and the demonstrators started breaking up the building, set a car on fire and the whole building set on fire.

"And according to our centre manger both the ground floor and the second floor are completely burnt out."

He then added, "If you want to see a nuclear-free Middle East, you've got to remove that threat from Iran, including the rhetorical threat to wipe Israel off the face of the map... and once you've done that, then we can get on to work at, in respect of Israel."

Straw's remarks were analyzed carefully in Jerusalem, but it was decided not to make an issue of them because Straw made clear that Britain remained "on board" on the Iranian nuclear issue.

"That is the most important thing," one government official said, saying that Israel did not want to deflect from the Iranian issue by drawing attention to itself and creating a diplomatic issue over Straw's comments.

"This isn't the time to discuss this," he said. Besides, he added, Israel has also made it clear that it was in favor of a nuclear-free Middle East, but that discussions about this could only take place in the distant future, after Israel has concluded peace agreements with all the countries in the region.

That the Iranian nuclear issue would ultimately spotlight Israel was not something that has been unexpected, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said that US President George Bush's famous letter of April 2004 included a line pledging US commitment to Israel's deterrence capacity.

That letter reads, "The United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel's security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel's capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats."

Sharon interpreted this as a US promise to back Israel when there were attempts - which he believed would follow the international community's handling of the Iranian nuclear issue - to dismantle what he referred to as "Israel's deterrence ability."

Ironically, Straw's interview appeared the same night that a BBC Newsnight report appeared claiming that the UK supplied Israel with quantities of plutonium while Harold Wilson was prime minister in the 1960s.

The group, an armed offshoot of the Palestinian leadership's mainstream Fatah movement, had earlier threatened a "powerful response" after the withdrawal of British-US supervision from the prison in the desert oasis town of Jericho.

"We will have a very powerful response not only for the Israelis but also for the British and Americans who withdrew their protection," it warned.

A British consulate spokeswoman insisted that the decision to withdraw the three-member team had been taken solely for the monitors' own safety and had been communicated to both Israel and the Palestinian days in advance.

But the move prompted protests across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including the brief abduction of a US national rescued by Palestinian security forces.

Around 100 Palestinians were demonstrating outside the British Council offices in Gaza, firing into the air in anger, witnesses said.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, hundreds of schoolchildren left their classes to demonstrate.

The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose leader Ahmed Saadat and three colleagues detained for the 2001 murder of far-right Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi were the focus of the Israeli assault, said it made a mockery of the British and US protection.

"This operation, which is a violation of international agreements, is a clear message to the world, and particularly the Americans and British who promised to provide adequate protection for the prison but turned out to be doing the (Israeli) enemy's work," charged the movement's Gaza leader, Jamil Majdalawi.

The Islamic militant group Hamas, which holds a majority in the parliament, earlier warned Israel against any attempt on the four detained militants' lives.

"This is a dangerous escalation. We warn against continuing such destructive actions, particularly against attempts on the lives of Saadat and his brothers," said Hamas prime minister-designate Ismail Haniya.

Handing the issue over to a popular referendum would neatly disengage Hamas from being labelled as a hardline movement that refuses to recognise Israel on ideological grounds.

The US and EU have repeatedly said they will cut financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas forms a government that does not recognise Israel.

But any referendum would leave the US and the EU with little choice but to resume funding the Palestinians, regardless of the outcome of a vote, because America and Europe have always pledged not to punish the Palestinian people.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, said on Sunday that the movement believes that the issue of recognising Israel is one between states and governments, not political parties.

"The recognition of a state should come from a government of a state not from a political, party, group or organisation," he said.

"Hamas in particular is not entitled, and it is not its mission, to determine whether Israel is a recognised state or not."

Likud Campaign

Likud, the right-wing party trailing in the run-up to an Israeli election on 28 March, has rejected any Palestinian state led by Hamas, which won elections in January.

Speaking to the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, which published an outline of the Likud campaign platform on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu, the party leader and former prime minister, asked: "Should I be talking about concessions when the Hamas government is in power?

"At the moment there is nothing to be done and we need to fight Hamas. As long as Hamas is in control, we will not return any territory to them, we will not transfer any money to them and we will not allow Palestinian workers to work in Israel. Our platform will be revised according to circumstances."

In the same vein, the Likud platform argues that the internationally drafted roadmap peace plan, in which a Palestinian state would live alongside Israel in peace, is a dead letter.

"The continued outline of the roadmap is impossible in light of the absence of a legitimate partner," it said.