The elderly man was identified as Rabah Hajjaj, 75. Two Hamas fighters and seven bystanders including three children aged 5, 14 and 16 were injured in the attack.

Eyewitnesses reported that the Israeli air force fired at least one missile at the vehicle while it was driving in the a crowded street.

A medical source at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza reported the the injured residents suffered light-to-moderate wounds.

In a separate incident, a UN official stated on Sunday that a UN school in Beit Lahia, in the norther part of the Gaza Strip, was subjected to Israeli military fire; two children aged seven and twelve were mildly injured in the attack.

The shelling came after three Israelis were injured after Palestinian fighters fired homemade shells at the Israeli Negev town of Sderot.

Earlier on Monday, soldiers invaded Bethlehem and surrounded the house of, Shareef Abu Hadeed, said to be Islamic Jihad operative in the city.

Mohammad, the brother of Shareef, went out of the house to negotiate with the soldiers, but they detained him.

IMEMC correspondent said that the father of Abu Hadeed went out of the house later on to negotiate with the soldiers. It is still unclear if Abu Shareef is in the surrounded home.

Two residents, not members of the family, were detained by the soldiers who also took the wife of Abu Hadeed and his cousin prisoner, apparently to pressure him to surrender.

All residents in nearby homes, including children and elderly, were forced out and are currently held in a nearby house the army controlled and is apparently using it as a temporary interrogation center.

One reporter was mildly injured in his chest after a bullet fired by the army hit him in his bullet-proof vest.

Army invades Bethlehem, surrounds a house and clashes with local youth
Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC, NOvember 20, 13:46

The Israeli army invaded the West Bank city of Bethlehem, surrounded a house of a wanted resident and clashed with the local youth on Monday afternoon. At least one resident was injured, and one reporter was hit ricocheted bullet into his bullet-proof vest.

Local residents informed the IMEMC that troops stormed the Manger Square located in the city Center, surrounded the house of Sharef Abdul-Qader, said to be Islamic Jihad operative in the city.

Sozens of youth clashed with the invading forces and hurled stones at them, soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition, tear gas and sound bombs.

The invasion and the clashes are ongoing as the military continues the offesnive in the city.

Two weeks ago army invaded the city killed two and injured more than 20 in similar circumstances.

The invasion started early in the morning, according to local sources, who said there are currently tanks surrounding the southern part of the town and enforcing a total siege on that area of Beit Hanoun. In nearby Jabalia refugee camp, the Abd Al Haleem Al Khudary family survived a certain death when one Israeli tank shell hit the upper floor of their house, during the morning shelling.

Earlier in the morning, Israeli army tanks shelled Izbeit Abd Rabuh, a village to the east of Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern part of the Gaza strip. Palestinian sources said that the tanks fired four shells that landed near residents' houses and farm lands causing damage. Medical sources said that medical teams and ambulances rushed to the area and found no injuries, but reported several cases of shock, especially among the children.

In a related incident, the Israeli army apparently targeted a group of residents standing in the street east of Jabalia refugee camp with one missile, medical sources reported no injures.

The center reported that the Israeli Military Commander did not inform the residents and the Anata local council of the annexation order, which did not give them a chance to appeal against it.

The office only posted the order at a wall in the District Coordination Office (DCO); 31 days later, the residents knew about the decision by chance when some of them headed to the DCO for paper work.

Musaada issued a press release slamming the Israeli procedures and the deception used by the military in order to annex the Palestinian lands.

Lawyer of the Musaada Center, Bassam Karaja, said that the center will follow the case at higher authorities in Israel in an attempt to cancel the order and its consequences on the lands.

Karaja added that if the appeals fail to void the military order, the center will file another appeal to the Israeli High Court of Justice.

"The annexation order is not about security, it is part of settlement expansion plans in the area", Karaja stated, "They want to annex more Palestinian lands in order to expand settlements, and military camps".

Karaja stated that this decision serves the expansion plan of Alon settlement which will also lead to the isolation of twenty-thousands of Dunams of farmlands.

He also said the the Israeli decision include annexing lands for the construction of a section of the Annexation Wall that will extend in the area to surround settlements and military camps.

Anata is already surrounded from the north by the Wall and Pisgot Zeev settlement, settlement road number 70, in addition to a military checkpoint at the entrance of Shu'fat refugee camp and the barbed-wires surrounding Al Z'ayyim area.

Karaja said that if the latest annexation decision is implemented, Anata town which is considered a main link between Jerusalem and the West Bank, will be totally isolated. Anata is inhibited by 18000 residents.

'Israel perpetuating destruction'

According to the report, Israel was determined to ensure that the group's political leadership in Gaza, the West Bank and abroad would "no longer escape responsibility" for the rocket attacks.

Kassam rockets have rained down on Israel on a regular basis even after the IDF withdrew from Gaza, recently prompting Sderot schools to strike and a mass evacuation of youngsters from the town.

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last Tuesday that although the number of terror attacks in the year following disengagement had decreased, "the important thing to look at is the amount of weapons being smuggled into the Strip and the significant strengthening of Hamas as a result of disengagement."

Committee members and MKs have been urging more action by the IDF following the Kassam hit on Sderot last week that killed one woman and seriously wounded two other residents of the city.

In recent months, Israeli security forces have used telephone calls to warn Palestinian militants and others near alleged militant safe houses and weapons caches, giving them up to a half hour to evacuate. When militia leader Mohammed Baroud got the call Saturday, he enlisted neighbors to protect his house from the Israeli military. They've now set up a system of shifts to protect the house around the clock.

Palestinian leaders are hailing this as a moral victory that will be replicated. If so, it may herald a significant tactical shift from attacks by tiny secretive militant groups to nonviolent civilian protest, a change that will force Israel to adjust its strategy. It also underscores the difficulty of fighting militant groups embedded in a civilian population - whether it be in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Gaza.

"The Palestinians are creative and this is something amazing," says Maher Miqqdad, a Fatah spokesman. "Maybe in the past six years of the intifada, the focus was on military resistance. But we shouldn't deny the importance of peaceful resistance. There is an importance in increasing the peaceful struggle."

An Israeli army spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity said the attack was scrapped after the military realized that dozens of Palestinians were demonstrating on the roof of Mr. Baroud's home.

Having backed down, Israel's military might have to rethink its methods of striking at militant targets. Israel's army prefers attacking from the air to risking soldiers' lives by sending infantry and armored units on raids. And the advance warning of raids is meant to avoid civilian casualties, the Israeli military says.

But now, less than two weeks after the killing of at least 20 Palestinians in northern Gaza brought a storm of international criticism against Israel, this tactic may have backfired by creating the risk of even more innocent victims.

"This is definitely a problem," says the army spokesman. "The reason why we warn ahead is to avoid innocent injuries. Instead, they are using the warning to do what they did yesterday. We'll see how we can deal with it."

Baroud is a member of the Popular Resistance Committee, a militia which participated in the abduction of Israel Cpl. Gilad Shalit and frequently fires Qassam missiles into southern Israel.

"It's a victory. They forced the army to change direction," says Sliman A-Shafi, a Gaza correspondent for Israel Channel 2 who said the Palestinians protested under the slogan "Either we live together or we die together."

The success of the mass protest is stirring nostalgia for the first Palestinian intifada of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a battle with Israel seen as a popular uprising fought with stones and Molotov cocktails rather than with missiles and suicide bombers.

Palestinians credit the first intifada as winning self-government and international recognition, while the economic hardship and anarchy accompanying the recent uprising has made it much more difficult to celebrate.

"People realize that we might go back to the popular resistance as we had in the first intifada," says Omar Shaban, a Gaza political analyst. "People are becoming convinced that the popular resistance is more effective than the military resistance."

But one human rights activist expressed reservations about the use of human shields to ward off the Israeli army.

"In principle, it's forbidden for militants to draft people to protect them," says Sarit Michaeli, a spokewoman for the Israeli human rights monitor B'tselem. "The idea of citizens coming to protect a house which is a military target is problematic, to say the least."

And yet, Ms. Michaeli says that whether or not the human shield protest constitutes a human rights breach depends on whether the protesters participated willingly or were coerced, whether minors were involved, and whether the house was a genuine military target.

On Sunday, 10 Palestinians were injured in a botched Israeli strike on Hamas operatives accused of being involved in manufacturing rockets. To be sure, under constant pressure from Israel's campaign against militants, many Gazans are unlikely to disavow the role of fighters who retaliate against the attacks.

"This kind of [peaceful] resistance cannot replace the rocket resistance," says Jamila Shanti, a female member of Hamas who helped organize a permanent presence of female human shields around the house. "The popular resistance is to protect the people from the bombing. The rocket resistance is to confront the Israeli machinery."

- Safwat al-Kahlout contributed to this report from Gaza City.

"There is no question that one of the things that must be investigated is the way in which the orders were given and implemented," Halutz was quoted as saying Monday morning. "Were the orders explicit? I believe that they were," he added.

According to the report, Halutz ordered the IDF to use cluster bombs with extreme caution and not to fire them into populated areas during the war.

Despite of the orders, Israeli forces did so anyway, primarily using artillery batteries and the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS).

These artillery batteries and MLRS are estimated to have delivered thousands of cluster bombs, containing a total of some 4 million bomblets, during the conflict.

Following some media reports and criticism from international organizations, Halutz appointed IDF Brigadier General Mishel Ben Baruch to head a probe into the use of the weapons.

The inquiry's findings were handed over to Halutz and IDF Advocate General Avichai Mendelblit, who will determine whether the case merits court-martial proceedings.

Since the cease-fire went into effect on August 14, at least 22Lebanese civilians, including many children, have been killed and 134 others injured by unexploded bomblets.

Each rocket or shell can contain as many as several hundred bomblets, which are meant to disperse over an area of hundreds of square meters, exploding as they hit the ground.

To date, roughly 58,000 unexploded bomblets have been discovered at about 800 different sites in southern Lebanon. Most of them are near populated areas.

On Sunday afternoon, the Israeli Air Force fired two missiles at a vehicle driving near Salah Ed Deen Mosque in Al Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City killing one Palestinian and injuring at least nine others.

Media sources said that Israel refused to allow an medical investigation mission to come to the Gaza Strip.

Recently, the United Nations General Assembly approved sending an investigation mission to the Gaza Strip to investigate the death of 20 Palestinians in an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun on November 8.

The General assembly's resolution although not binding, has condenmed the Israeli attack at Beit Hanoun. On the other hand, the United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemening the attack and calling for opening a probe into it. Israel claimed the attack was a mistake, while the US said it was a self defense and insisted on Israel's right to defend itself.