Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in 2008: Bush

A Palestinian youth throws stones at Israeli troops during a military operation in the Old City of Nablus in West Bank yesterday. About 70 Israeli army jeeps rolled into the West Bank town of Nablus Thursday to arrest wanted militants and were surrounding buildings including the Rafidya hospital in the city centre, a Palestinian official said. Photo: AFP

US President George W Bush believes an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal will be reached this year, according to excerpts of an interview published on Thursday ahead of his visit to the region.
Bush said the two sides must clinch a deal in 2008 in order to see the creation of a Palestinian state, Israel's top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper quoted him as saying in the interview which will be published in full on Friday.
The US president is visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories next week in a bid to give a push to Middle East peace talks which were relaunched at an international conference in Annapolis in November.
In the interview, Bush sought to ease Israeli fears that any future Palestinian state could threaten its security.
"I will not allow the creation of a terrorist state on Israel's border," he said in a quote translated into Hebrew.
Meanwhile, eight Palestinians, including two women, were killed in Israeli ground and air bombardments in Gaza on Thursday, local medical sources said, in the latest blitz against the Hamas-ruled territory.
Israeli troops and tanks backed by combat helicopters were operating in the village of Bani Suheila near the southern town of Khan Yunis, witnesses and medical sources said.
Eight people, including a mother and daughter and at least three militants, were killed in the Israeli bombardments, while 30 people were injured and several houses destroyed, the sources said.
Israel has carried out near-daily military strikes and incursions across what it considers a "hostile entity" in a bid to halt militant rocket fire since the Islamist movement Hamas seized power in Gaza in June.
The renewed violence comes shortly before US President George W. Bush is due in the region in a bid to push forward recently revived Middle East peace talks.
In Gaza, brothers Ahmad Fayyad, 20, and 25-year-old Sami Fayyad, both members of the radical Islamic Jihad, were killed in a raid on a house which also killed their mother, Karima, 50, and sister Asmaa, 20, the medical sources said.