Posted on 07/25/2002 4:53:19 PM PDT by John W
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, July 26 — Israeli tanks entered Gaza City early Friday, residents said, approaching a crowded neighborhood in the first military activity since the Israeli bombing of a house killed a Hamas leader and 14 other people.
Witnesses said seven Israeli tanks, two armored personnel carriers and a jeep moved about 1½ miles inside Gaza City, firing machine guns. One Palestinian was wounded, they said. The Israeli military would not comment, and the force’s mission was not immediately clear. Tuesday, an Israeli F-16 warplane dropped a huge bomb on a building in another part of Gaza City, killing Salah Shehadeh, the commander of the military wing of the militant Islamic group Hamas, along with his bodyguard and 13 other people, nine of them children. The air strike brought harsh criticism because of the deaths of the bystanders, and many also denounced Israel for its policy of killing suspected terrorists. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer defended targeting of Shehadeh, claiming Thursday that he had been plotting a “mega-attack” against Israel. But leaders have admitted that the killing of the others was a mistake, blaming faulty intelligence.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres warned that Israeli civilians would likely “pay dearly” for the airstrike. Early Thursday, suspected Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli rabbi near the Jewish settlement of Alei Zahav, south of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya in the West Bank, rescue officials and the military said. A second person was seriously wounded. The gunfire, coming from the nearby Palestinian village of Burkin, continued after rescue crews arrived and stopped only after Israeli tanks drove up and returned fire, Avner Mullah, a medic, told Israel Radio. Two Palestinian militant groups claimed responsibility for the attack. The Popular Army Front-Return Battalions, a coalition of militant groups, said in a statement that it carried out the attack in reprisal for the assassination of Shehadeh. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group that is part of the coalition and has links to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, also claimed responsibility.
Israelis braced for further retaliation. “I know that there is very serious escalation,” Peres told Army Radio a day after he called the strike a “mistake.” “I fear that innocent people will pay for it dearly.” He admitted knowing that the Palestinian Authority had been conducting negotiations with various militant groups, including Hamas, aimed at forging a cease-fire. But he said that not all factions were on board and that it was not worth talking about because the agreement had not been finalized.
The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, met Wednesday and Thursday to consider condemning Israel for the bombing, the latest in a string of denunciations from the United States, Europe and the Arab world. But Arab delegates put off introducing a resolution because ambassadors were divided over the text. Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, said Arab ambassadors would meet again later Friday and then seek reactions among Security Council members. “We don’t want to push anyone before we know that something is possible,” he told Reuters in an apparent reference to the United States, which opposes a resolution at this time. Syria, the only Arab nation on the council, reportedly believed the text, which was circulated informally by Saudi Arabia as current head of the Arab group of nations, was not worded strongly enough, council sources said.
Critics — including the Americans, the Europeans, Arab countries and Palestinians — have dismissed Israel’s explanation that it was aiming only for Shehadeh and did not mean to kill so many people, questioning why such a heavy bomb was used in a densely packed residential neighborhood against a single target. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was reviewing Israel’s use of U.S. weapons, but he gave no hint that it would suffer consequences for the F-16 air raid. The Israeli military and its Shin Bet security service were investigating what went wrong. Military commanders insisted that they did not know civilians would be hurt. More than 100 people were injured in the strike, most of them in adjoining structures damaged by the bomb. Countering the wave of international criticism, Israel on Wednesday sent Peres, its best-known peace advocate, on a tour of the offices of foreign news media in Jerusalem, where he said, over and over, that the bombing was a mistake. Peres said that as goodwill gestures, Israel would release some of the funds it had been keeping from the Palestinian Authority and would allow 4,000 Palestinian workers to enter Israel. In addition, he said, curfews in West Bank cities and towns would be lifted for longer periods.
However, the gestures did not mollify the Palestinians, who called the bombing a massacre and have been demanding much wider Israeli measures to ease restrictions in the West Bank. Before the current fighting erupted in September 2000, about 125,000 Palestinians worked in Israel, and Israel regularly transferred millions of dollars of customs and taxes to the Palestinian Authority under terms of interim peace accords. After suicide bombings in Jerusalem a month ago, Israeli forces took control of seven of the eight main West Bank cities and towns, imposing curfews that confined people to their homes most of the time. Palestinians demand that Israel pull out of their areas, remove roadblocks and other restrictions and free all their funds. The Israelis say the restrictions are necessary to keep bombers and other attackers out of Israel, and they have refused to turn over the money, charging that the funds would finance terror attacks.
Soon, there will be not enough terrorists to threaten the existence of Israel, then Israel will have the security she deserves. Then maybe, maybe, the palestinians will join the rest of the world.
Why is this terrorist mouthpiece in the Israeli government? He sounds like he gets his marching orders from Arafat.
Because the death toll would've been higher, including on their own side.
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