OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 11 August — A Palestinian municipality worker on the way to work in the West Bank town of Nablus was killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers yesterday. Ahmed Al-Kouraini, 54, worked for the electricity department of the municipality and was on his way to work at the emergency fire services building when he was stopped by an Israeli tank.
"There was nothing happening there, they told him to stop, he stopped, they shot in the air and then a soldier shot him in the head, one bullet," said Yousef Al-Jadi, head of the Nablus Fire Department. Al Kouraini died before reaching Ittihad Hospital.
The Israeli Army "expressed regret for the incident", adding an initial probe showed the man had a pass which allowed him to travel in the city during curfew.
"This just goes to show how insufferable our situation is — even those supposedly permitted to be out and about are at risk," Nablus Mayor Ghassan Shak’a said. Israeli troops also killed another Palestinian who had entered the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip.
In the northern West Bank, a female settler was killed after a Palestinian infiltrated a Jewish settlement. The Palestinian forced his way into the Mekhora settlement, some 15 km southeast of Nablus, and managed to kill a woman before being shot dead, an army spokeswoman said.
In the United States, Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razzak Al-Yahya met with CIA Director George Tenet to discuss a US plan to reshape Palestinian security forces. The officials met at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, outside Washington for about an hour to discuss a US plan for training and rebuilding the Palestinian security infrastructure, sources said. The CIA declined to comment and Palestinian sources were not available to give details about yesterday’s scheduled meeting. A source close to the Palestinian delegation, speaking earlier in the week, said it was unclear what role, if any, the CIA would play in any future restructuring of a security infrastructure Palestinians say has been wrecked by Israel.
Among the reforms suggested are proposals to merge different branches of the security services run by President Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to make them more accountable and able to rein in hard-liners. Arafat said Friday that the United States, Egypt and Jordan would guide reforms to his security services, his first public acceptance of foreign involvement in the process.
Last month US Secretary of States Colin Powell and the White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice discussed the US plan for the Palestinian security forces with two senior aides to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Washington wants to convince Israel that the plan could protect Israelis from attack by Palestinians. The idea is that Israelis would then withdraw from the seven Palestinian cities they reoccupied in June.
