NYT: Israeli Soldier Is Killed as Palestinian Agent Sets Trap

ERUSALEM, Dec. 7 - An Israeli soldier was killed and four were wounded today when a Palestinian double agent lured the troops into a booby-trapped chicken coop in Gaza City, the Hamas movement said.

In the fighting that followed, Israeli forces killed four Palestinian militants in the bloodiest single clash since the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat died near four weeks ago, Hamas said. The Israeli military declined to comment on the Hamas statement. Fighting in the Gaza Strip had become less frequent recently as Israelis and Palestinians, along with others in the region, raised the prospect of resuming political discussions in the wake of Mr. Arafat's death.

But before dawn today, Israeli troops launched a weapons search on the eastern edge of Gaza City, and the resulting chicken-coop explosion killed a sergeant and a bomb-sniffing dog and wounded four soldiers, the military said.

Hamas, the Islamic group that has carried out many attacks against Israel, claimed responsibility for the elaborate ambush at a news conference staged by three armed and masked men in Gaza City.

The spokesmen said Hamas members spent four months digging a tunnel to the east of Gaza City, near the Karni border crossing with Israel, and planted explosives inside.

During the same period, a Hamas member posed as an informant cooperating with the Israeli security forces, the spokesmen said. Israel relies on a vast network of Palestinian informants to track down Palestinians involved in violence.

The supposed informant provided the details that drew the soldiers to the booby-trapped chicken coop, which hid the entrance to the tunnel. As the soldiers reached the scene, the explosives were detonated, the Hamas men said.

"We managed to lure Zionist intelligence toward bitter death," said one of the masked Hamas spokesmen.

In gun battles that followed the explosion, two Hamas men were killed, and an Israeli airstrike in the area killed two members of Islamic Jihad who came to take part in the fighting, the Palestinian groups said.

At least seven other Palestinians were wounded as many youths took to the streets to throw stones at Israeli troops, according to Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials.

The sergeant was the first Israeli soldier killed in fighting in more than a month, one of the longest such stretches during the past four years.

Lot's of first person articles at the link.

The will to win

At 2:00pm on 6 October 1973, more than 220 Egyptian warplanes flew over the Suez Canal and attacked Israeli command centres in the Sinai. "Operation Badr", soon to be known as the October War, had been launched, and a new stage in Egyptian and Arab history was opened.

Twenty-five years later, both the direct effects and the long-term ramifications of the October War, domestically, regionally and internationally, remain subject to debate. President Mubarak this week described as the product of "ignorance and prejudice" Israel's attempts to denigrate the Egyptian victory. These attempts are belied not only by the facts, but also by the statements Israel's own leaders and commentators made at the time, some of which are reproduced in this supplement.

Other aspects of the fallout from October are less clear. There is little doubt that the war opened the way to the Middle East peace process, which effectively began with disengagement agreements Egypt and Syria concluded with Israel soon after the guns had fallen silent. Sadat, hailed in Egypt as "the hero of war and peace", acted swiftly to try and reap the fruits of the victory and liberate occupied Arab territories. As far as Egypt was concerned, the results were spectacular. By 1982, Egypt had regained sovereignty over all of occupied Sinai, save for Taba, which was returned to the motherland in '89. Not a single Israeli settlement or installation remained on Egyptian territory.

In 1982, however, Sadat's optimistic declaration that the October '73 War would be the last Arab-Israeli war had to be qualified; making it the last "major" Arab-Israeli war. Israel invaded Lebanon and wreaked havoc on its capital, Beirut. And a quarter of a century after the October War, the prospects for a comprehensive and just peace in the region appear, if anything, more remote than they were in '73, despite the Madrid peace process, the accords the Palestinians and Jordan have concluded with Israel, and the progress that, not so long ago, seemed to have been achieved in Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations.

The October War was, without a doubt, the high point of Arab solidarity. A core axis formed by Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia was able to mobilise the Arab world as never before. But international and regional conditions have changed, possibly beyond recognition, since 1973, and it is an open question whether the three allies today could muster even a semblance of the Arab solidarity they were able to enlist during the war and in its immediate aftermath.

One fundamental aspect of the war, however, cannot be dissipated by a fast-changing world. The shattering defeat of June '67 failed to break the Egyptians. After five years of resolve, sound planning and hard work, they were able to do what even they, not to mention the whole world, had believed was impossible. It all came together in a moment of great heroism, national unity and self-sacrifice -- the "uncrossable" Suez Canal was crossed, the "invincible" Bar Lev line was destroyed, Sinai was returned.

This, ultimately, is the lesson of October '73 and it is this, above all, that Egyptians were celebrating this week. f

"Israeli soldiers mourn at the grave of Stf. Sgt. Nadav Kudinsky, an army dog handler, during his funeral in Kiryat Gat, southern Israel,Thursday Dec. 7, 2004. Hamas militants killed the Israeli soldier and wounded four with an explosion in a booby-trapped chicken coop Tuesday, in what the Islamic group said was an elaborate scheme to lure troops to the area with the help of a double agent.(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)"

For some reason, I cannot get the first picture of the group of mourning Israeli soliders Cinnamon Girl posted to paste here in my reply. I wanted very much to paste it in my reply, as it hit me like a locomotive.

What a deeply moving picture! I don't have the words to say what I feel seeing this picture and reading the article. I wish I did. All that I am able to say is that my heart goes out to these young Israeli soldiers and the family of Stf. Sgt. Nadav Kudinsky. May his soul rest with the Lord.

This photo of a diary page released Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2004 by the Ghetto Fighters House museum in northern Israel shows a diagram of a hideout, and a description in Polish by a Jewish woman of her final days of the uprising against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1943. A six-page diary, which was found recently among other artifacts at the archives of the Holocaust museum, was written by an unnamed woman and is part of the only know account written during the unsuccessful Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Israeli soldiers greet each other after pulling out of eastern Gaza City following an army operation, as they arrive in Nahal Oz, just outside the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), Tuesday Dec. 7, 2004. Israeli troops moved into the neighborhood early Tuesday after militants set off explosives in a booby-trapped chicken coop killing one Israeli soldier and wounding four, the Israeli army and militants said. At least two Palestinian militants were also killed in the ensuing gunbattle, Palestinian sources said

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