Ms Hurndall also believes the trial has only happened because of pressure from the family, and the fact the victim is a Westerner.

"We have forced the Israeli army to prosecute this soldier, but there are thousands of cases out there where people don't have the weight behind them that we have."

The Israeli authorities deny accusations they would have rather seen the matter drop, and say there is no policy of tolerating the shooting of civilians.

An Israeli embassy spokeswoman said: "The fact that there has been a soldier standing trial is the best example of the seriousness of the process of investigation.

"It makes no difference which nationality you are from, either Palestinian, Israeli, British, French or American - there is the same law for everyone."

Mr Hurndall's father Anthony has spent hours interviewing witnesses to the April 2003 shooting as well as experts in an effort to catch his son's killer.

His mother and sister also gave up work to drive their campaign for justice, establishing the Tom Hurndall Fund to raise money and awareness.

Scapegoat?

Hayb's defence tried to paint him as a scapegoat, pressured into giving a series of confessions by manipulative officers.

It said the prosecution was relying on these confessions, with the rest of its case sparse and lacking in ballistics or other corroborative evidence.

One of Hayb's advocates, Yariv Ronen, argued there was no line of sight between the tower where his client was stationed and the spot where Mr Hurndall was shot.

He believes the confessions were given by his client under duress.

"He has the minimum intelligence - you can push this guy around, you can make him confess," Mr Ronen said.

One of the key claims, that Hayb told colleagues and commanders that he had shot someone immediately after Tom Hurndall was hit, is dismissed by Mr Ronen.

"Saying to your colleague you shot someone is something you might say once a day. That is the tragic reality in Israel.

"You shoot one or two times a day, you don't know if [the target] was hurt. It is an apocalypse there."

"There has been no change in policy," an Israeli military spokesman said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. "We will continue to fight them (the rocket launchers) intensely, while trying to avoid hurting innocent civilians." Hadil Ghraben was killed and 13 other people were wounded when two shells blew huge holes in a concrete block house in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday afternoon.

Relatives and neighbours in private cars drove bleeding children to the small local hospital. Doctors feverishly bandaged a wailing infant on a blood-splattered hospital bed as others took away the dusty and bloody body of the dead girl.

The army confirmed it was shelling populated areas from which militants fire rockets - a policy adopted just last week.

Israel has stepped up its strikes against Palestinian rocket launchers since the new Palestinian government led by Hamas militants took power two weeks ago.

Palestinian militants have threatened revenge, but the Hamas government is quietly urging them to refrain from launching rockets at Israel without permission, officials from both sides confirmed.

Although the rocket attacks have not stopped and Hamas says it still supports armed resistance against Israel, halting the upsurge in violence would better able it to focus on other brewing crises.

Government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said Hamas, which has not been participating in the rocket attacks, would try to get control over the rocket fire by negotiating with other militant factions.

"We want resistance to be arranged and organized," Hamad said.

Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in January on a platform pledging to end government corruption and improve public services. But since being sworn into office, the government has found itself facing international isolation, a financial crisis, Palestinian infighting and now growing violence with Israel.

An Israeli security official said it appears Hamas is trying to regulate the rocket fire because uncontrolled violence is against its interests. The official was not permitted to be identified under military rules.

Islamic Jihad, which has been behind much of the rocket fire, said it would continue the attacks.

"It is time to be united against the occupation aggression and not to talk about a new period of calm," Mohammed al-Hindi, an Islamic Jihad leader, said in a radio interview.

Coyle and other seniors at Monte Vista Mobile Estates are up in arms over signals they say are too short to safely cross the five-lane boulevard.

They say signals turn red before they can reach the opposite curb on Sunland-Tujunga's busiest thoroughfare. They risk their lives each time they enter the crosswalk, they insist. At least one resident calls a cab just to cross the street.

"I can go halfway, then the light changes," said Edith Krause, 78, who uses an electric cart because she has difficulty walking. "I try my darndest to get to the other side without being killed."

So many seniors have complained about hasty intersections that Councilwoman Wendy Greuel asked transportation officials last week to study how to accommodate them.

The standard speed used for timing pedestrians is 4 feet per second.

The Coyle incident "has brought to bear an issue that is relatively common," Greuel said. "We should look at those areas with predominantly seniors and accommodate their needs in intersections."

The danger to pedestrians - particularly senior citizens - is acute, Los Angeles police say. Of the 94 pedestrians killed in the San Fernando Valley from 2003-05 while crossing the street, 31 were seniors.

Sgt. Mike Zaboski of the Valley Traffic Division said he couldn't comment on Coyle's ticket, that it was her word against the officer who cited her - identified only as Officer Kelly - as to whether she entered the crosswalk on the green.

"Right now, pedestrian accidents are above normal," he said Friday. "We're looking out for pedestrians - people who think they have carte blanche in crossing the street.

"I'd rather not have angry pedestrians," he said of those like Coyle. "But I'd rather have them be alive."

"It's a safety concern," added Jerry Baik, an assistant supervisor of trials for City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, whose office prosecutes traffic infractions like Coyle's.

"It's the officer's observation ... that she was acting in a dangerous way to herself as well as oncoming traffic."

Others besides Coyle, however, say signals on Foothill prompt a foot race to the other side.

On Friday, students ran - not walked - to make the lights, measured at 20 seconds from green to red.

"It sucks," said Sara Johnson, 14, of Sunland, who had just scampered with friends across the crosswalk at Woodward. "When the light turns red, you can't cross the street."

Chung Kim, manager of Jimmie Dean's Charbroiled Burgers at Foothill and Woodward, has seen close calls.

"Very hard to cross," he said, watching the intersection from his grill, "because signal's too short, the cars go so fast, every car over 45 miles per hour. It's crazy."

Coyle, a Cherokee medicine woman who splits her time between Sunland and the mountains above Sedalia, Colo., has done everything to fight her ticket, including send letters to Greuel's office.

The octogenarian, who has no phone or car, said she was simply hefting her groceries home when she not only got trapped in a busy intersection but got a ticket from a cop to boot.

"I think it's completely outrageous," said Coyle, wearing an Indian feather cap and homemade rock pendant. "I can't walk without a stick and I lose my balance.

"He treated me like a 6-year-old, like I don't know what I'm doing. I'm in shock that somebody's going to stop me on a green light while crossing the street."

More than 30 armored vehicles marched into the city and then moved into a nearby refugee camp on the western outskirts of Nablus, where soldiers raided houses.

Witnesses said several Israeli soldiers broke into the main mosque in the refugee camp in the morning and forced prayers to take off their clothes and searched them.

Nablus has been subjected to the ongoing Israeli military operation, which began six days ago. Israeli soldiers raided houses, and detained young men, claiming they were militants and wanted by Israelis security forces.

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks continued shelling northern Gaza Strip, after Palestinian militant groups kept launching homemade rockets from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel. No injury was reported. On Monday, a 6-year-old girl was killed and some of her family members injured as an Israeli tank shell hit their home in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahya.

"There will be no aid to [Hamas] government organizations, but we will maintain humanitarian aid," said Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot.

"The Palestinian people have opted for this government, so they will have to bear the consequences."

The EU gives around $700 million a year to the Palestinians. But officials said aid could continue through humanitarian groups.

Hamas, which won a majority in Palestinian parliamentary elections in January, has refused to recognize Israel, renounce violence or abide by past agreements in the peace process.

Western countries have insisted that the Palestinian government continue to fulfill those conditions in order to receive financial aid.

Canada cut off its payments last month, and Israel has stopped turning over millions of dollars in taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

The U.S has also cut off payments.

But the International Red Cross said Monday that aid organizations do not have the capacity to fill in for the Palestinian government if it is unable to maintain services.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, warned there could be a humanitarian and security crisis if the government cannot provide basic services.

The IRC said Israel, as the occupying power, is responsible under international law to provide services for the Palestinians.

EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said that for aid to resume, Hamas must "renounce violence, recognize the existence of Israel and also stand by the agreements'' previous Palestinian governments have signed with Israel.

Western diplomats and private-sector experts said Hamas's troubles finding a bank has for now eclipsed Western aid cuts as the biggest immediate threat to the new government's viability.

"This is by far the biggest crisis facing the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian economy. It could have profound long-term consequences," said Gidi Grinstein, president of the Reut Institute, an independent Israeli think tank.

Hamas cabinet members and other Palestinian officials have accused the Bush administration of sparking the crisis by pressuring Amman-based Arab Bank to stop managing the Palestinian Authority's main treasury account.

Diplomats and Palestinian officials said the account was effectively shut down, jeopardizing Hamas's ability to carry out basic functions like securing foreign aid and paying vendors.

"Even if you get emergency money together, there's no way to bring it in," without banks to make the transfers and hold the money, said a Western diplomat monitoring the crisis.

Hamas is already more than a week late paying March salaries to 140,000 Palestinian Authority workers and it was unclear when the government will be able to secure the funds to meet payroll.

In addition to pressuring the Arab Bank, "the Americans informed (other) Palestinian banks that if they deal with the Hamas government they could risk legal and political measures against them," a senior Palestinian official said.

But Western diplomats said Washington's role was unclear.

The Arab Bank sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury Department shortly after Hamas won a January 25 parliamentary election, seeking assurances it would not face U.S. penalties under the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism laws if it continued to manage the so-called "single treasury account," diplomats said.

The Treasury Department did not formally respond to the Arab Bank's letter, the diplomats said.

But Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said: "We're engaged in conversations with the Arab Bank on these and other issues through our embassy in Jordan."

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Treasury did not tell the Arab Bank to freeze the Palestinian Authority's account. The official did not elaborate on what the embassy told the bank about its legal exposure.

Experts said the banks's legal concerns stemmed from provisions of the Patriot Act and other U.S. laws which give the Bush administration sweeping powers to crack down on individuals and companies that provide any "material support" to Hamas.

The Arab Bank is already under particular scrutiny from U.S. regulators. It was fined $24 million last year over alleged failures to comply with anti-money laundering laws aimed at blocking funding for banned "terrorist organisations."

The Arab Bank could also face new civil lawsuits for handling Palestinian accounts, said Gary Osen, an attorney who has sued the Arab Bank on behalf of Americans killed in suicide bombings, alleging it had a role in helping get funds to Hamas.

"In a day or a year when Hamas blows up a cafe or a commuter bus, the Arab Bank or any other bank that provides financial services to PA would risk substantial liability," said Osen.

The risk of running afoul of the Patriot Act was also a factor for Israel's largest bank, Hapoalim, in severing banking ties to the Palestinians, a bank official said.

Grinstein said: "The irony is that it is driven not by the state of Israel, but by the United States."

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abbas said Israel's position "completely violates the agreements we have signed with them and violates international law".

"We demand from this Israeli government to stop such measures", Abbas said.

With foreign ministers from the European Union poised to endorse a freeze in direct aid to the new government, thousands of Palestinians poured onto the streets of Gaza in protest.

Israel has stepped up strikes in Gaza since election victor Hamas took control of the Palestinian Authority in late March. The group, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, crushed Abbas's Fatah movement in an election in January.

A shell landed near a house in north Gaza on Monday, wounding two Palestinians, witnesses said.

Israel says the shelling is meant to combat rocket attacks by militants, and Avi Dichter, a top adviser to interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told Israel radio that a ground assault of Gaza could not be ruled out.

"We have done it in the past and can do so in the present," said Dichter, who may be appointed to a senior security post in Olmert's new cabinet. [...]

Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima Party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres.

This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, "analysts" and "commentators". But it is a lie.

Only in paragraph two - or three or four - of the groveling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert's not very impressive election victory will allow him to "redraw" the "frontiers" of Israel, a decision described as "controversial" - the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel.

Yes, true, the smaller and more vulnerable Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian-owned land may be abandoned - stand by for more of the grief and tears that we witnessed in Gaza. But the rest - the great semi-circle of concrete that runs around east Jerusalem, for example - will not be depopulated.

Let's start with the wall. It will soon run from top to bottom of the occupied Palestinian West Bank - and it is going to stay.

It is higher in the long sectors where it has been completed (east of Jerusalem, for example) than the Berlin Wall. Yet journalists go on calling it a "security barrier" or a "fence" - because the as-yet-uncompleted sectors of the wall are still coils of barbed wire.

This is part of the dream world that editors and reporters have constructed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It exists in the same Potemkin landscape that allows journalists to call the occupied Palestinian territory "disputed territory" - after former US secretary of state Colin Powell ordered his diplomats in the region to use this mendacious phrase - and to call Jewish colonies illegally built on Arab land "settlements" or, my favorites now, "Jewish neighborhoods" or "outposts".

It is the same stage on which Israelis are killed by Palestinians, which they are, but on which Palestinians die in anonymous "clashes". (With whom - and killed by whom - exactly?)

And each of these little lies, of course, contains a kernel of truth. The occupied territories are "disputed" between Israelis and Palestinians, the first claiming that God gave them the land, the second producing land deeds to prove that the law entitles them to their own property.

If illegal colonies such as Maale Adumim are built adjacent to Jerusalem - itself illegally annexed by Israel - then of course they are "neighborhoods". And since the wall - which has gobbled up 10% more Palestinian land for the Israelis - is to prevent suicide bombers (and has been fairly successful in doing so), it is a "security barrier".

I seem to recall that the East Germans called the Berlin Wall - or "Berlin Fence" as I suppose we would have to call it if built by the Israelis - a "security barrier".

Forget the illegality of occupation, then, and the illegality of stealing someone else's home and land, and the illegality of building a wall that thieves yet more property from the 22% of mandate Palestine that the Palestinians are supposed to negotiate for.

Let me be frank. If I were an Israeli I, too, would have built a wall to prevent the suicide executioners of Islamic Jihad and, earlier, of Hamas.

But I would have built it along the international frontier of Israel - not used the wall as a cheap method of stealing more land.

Indeed, under UN Security Council Resolution 242, which is meant to be the foundation of any peace, the acquisition of land through war is stated to be illegal. The wall itself is illegal. The International Court also ruled it to be illegal. And Israel ignored this ruling. So, of course, did the US.

But now the burden of all this post-election theft is to be placed upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

This colourless, helpless man, who presided over the Palestinian Authority's continuing corruption, is supposed to persuade the new Hamas government to accept all of Israel's land-grabs, to pick up where the Oslo process left off (which still left Jerusalem exclusively in Israeli hands), and to abandon all violence - which means to surrender whenever Israeli troops raid refugee camps or cities in the West Bank.

The point is that Hamas members have been as assuredly elected representatives of the Palestinians as Olmert and his forthcoming allies in government are representatives of Israelis.

But this does not allow them to make any "controversial" plans to redraw their "border" with Israel, not even to insist that Israel withdraws - or redeploys - to its internationally recognized borders. (I'm talking about the pre-1967 frontier, not the 1948 one.)

They cannot demand fulfillment of UN Resolution 242 because President George W Bush has already made it clear that the vast Jewish colonies east of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself, will remain in Israeli hands.

Sure, 14 of the 24 Hamas ministers have been in Israeli prisons. But what are Palestinians supposed to think when they realize that 15 Israeli generals have been elected to the new Knesset, along with six secret service agents?

Yet even this is not the point. If the Israelis want Hamas to acknowledge the state of Israel, then Hamas should be expected to acknowledge the state of Israel that exists within its legal frontiers - not the illegal borders now being dreamt up by Olmert.

We will have to abandon the idea that Ariel Sharon - an unindicted war criminal after his involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres - was really going to give up the major Jewish colonies built illegally on Arab land or the illegal annexation of Jerusalem.

Certainly, Olmert is not going to do that.

He is going to create wider frontiers for Israel and steal - let's call a spade a spade - more Arab land in doing so.

The US will go along with this next illegal land-grab. But will the European Union? Will the UN? Will Russia? Will Tony Blair?

Israelis deserve peace and security as much as Palestinians. But "new" and expanded "controversial" Israeli frontiers will not bring peace or security to either.

The 78-year-old Sharon has been in a coma since early January, when he suffered a devastating stroke. Doctors in Israel believe he has little chance of recovery.

Under Israeli law, a prime minister can be temporarily replaced for up to 100 days before a permanent successor must be named.

It will have been 100 days on Friday since Ehud Olmert was named Sharon's temporary replacement. However, since the weeklong Jewish Passover holiday begins Wednesday, the declaration of permanent incapacitation was moved up to Tuesday.

The cabinet voted unanimously in a special session on Tuesday to designate Olmert acting prime minister. The appointment takes effect on Friday, Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon said.

Sharon suffered his stroke weeks after leaving the right-wing Likud party to form the centrist Kadima.

Olmert led the new party to a narrow election victory last month, running on a plan to withdraw from parts of the West Bank and draw Israel's final borders by 2010.

Sharon underwent a CT scan Monday to determine the progress of surgery performed last week that reattached a portion of his skull which had been removed in a previous operation.

Hospital officials said the scan revealed no change. Sharon is listed in "serious but stable" condition, so doctors do not believe his life is in immediate danger.

The lobby's effectiveness at control was illustrated two years ago. Both government and media condemned China when it arrested, and accused of espionage, a Chinese citizen-Green Card holder visiting from the U.S. Neither the U.S. government nor media has ever protested-has never even mentioned-Israel's years-long multiple arrests and protracted detentions of American citizens, without charge or trial. In September 2000, CNN interviewed four Americans who had been tortured, the only report on this compelling story, and the network has since been forced to refuse selling recordings of that news segment, "Americans Mistreated in Israeli Jails." America would have been fully informed had any other country committed these acts.

The lobby also recently blocked the New York staging of a play, following its successful London run, based on the words of peace activist Rachel Corrie. She was crushed by an armored Caterpillar bulldozer while attempting to prevent demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. The driver failed to notice her blaze orange vest, yellow hard hat and bullhorn.

No rational American wants anything bad to happen to Israelis or Palestinians or Americans.. But they have happened, are happening, will continue to happen. Israel's actions often involve violations of human rights, international law, and UN resolutions, undertaken at the expense of a helpless, brutalized Palestine, thus denying Israel peace, security, and international support. Worse, they also lead to violent reactions, which are often recognized under the UN Charter as legitimate resistance to occupation.

Israeli actions also generate anti-Semitism, the very label the lobby uses to bludgeon into silence anyone in America who questions relations with Israel and its expansionist policies. This effectively blocks broad public understanding that Israel's interests and America's, sometimes in agreement, are sometimes sharply divergent. Of greater and entirely justifiable concern, the lobby has succeeded in pressuring successive administrations into actions and statements blatantly contrary to announced American principles and the advancement of U.S. objectives.

As the only nation unstintingly providing Israel with vast amounts of money, arms and unhesitating political protection, the United States is perceived as the key facilitator of 40 years of occupation and oppression. The massive, growing political, economic and human costs of continuing that close relationship merit public knowledge, discussion and debate. The Israel lobby prevents it, as Mearsheimer and Walt have carefully documented.