Israel warns against attacks during Gaza pullout

JERUSALEM -- A day after a tense summit, Israel warned the Palestinians on Wednesday it will launch airstrikes if militants attack during the evacuation of the Gaza Strip set to begin in August.\nPalestinian leaders were facing their own violence Wednesday. Gunmen shot at a building where Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia was meeting militants, and an explosive device was detonated as he and his entourage left the Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Qureia was not injured.\nThe Israeli government's pullout coordinator, Eival Gilady, said the military would call in airstrikes if necessary to stop Palestinian attacks, even if it meant causing civilian casualties.\n"We shall act in a very intensive way. We shall do it in a very surgical way, we shall do it in a very accurate way," he said. "We want to do it on the basis of precise intelligence.\n"But if we are compelled to use ... helicopters and planes, which cause more damage -- severe collateral damage -- with increased danger that people around a particular point of operations will be harmed, we shall have to do it," he said. "If there is terror, we shall respond."\nIsrael has said repeatedly that the pullout will not be carried out under fire. That led some to conclude that the evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank might be postponed if a shaky truce does not hold.\nPrime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected that conclusion in stark terms.\n"There will be no pullout under fire. We will not stop the pullout. We will stop the terrorism," he said late Tuesday in a speech in Jerusalem.\nSharon said he and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas agreed at their summit Tuesday to cooperate on the pullout.\n"We agreed during the meeting on full coordination of our exit from Gaza," Sharon said, adding this cooperation "will ensure a quiet exit, to the greatest benefit of both sides"