GAZA CITY, 30 August — The Palestinian Authority leadership called off high-level security talks with Israel yesterday after Israeli tank fire killed four members of a Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip, sending another shock wave through an already fragile plan to ease tensions between the sides.
At the same time, cross-border shooting broke out in the north after months of calm, as Lebanese Hezbollah resistance fighters fired at Israeli Army positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms region, triggering retaliatory Israeli air raids.
Palestinian Authority officials said the talks between Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razzaq Al-Yahya and Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer were called off after Israeli forces opened fire overnight on Palestinians living close to Netzarim settlement.
Israeli tanks stormed the Sheikh Ajleen neighborhood south of Gaza City shortly after midnight, killing Rueida Al-Hajeen, 55, her sons Ashraf, 22, and Nuhad, 17, as well as her nephew, Muhammad, 17, Palestinian medical sources said. According to a reporter on the scene, Palestinian ambulances rushed to the scene but were barred by the Israeli army from rescuing the injured. While the shelling that ripped through the neighborhood killed Rueida and Muhammad on the spot, Ashraf and Nuhad bled to death during the hour that elapsed before medical services could arrive.
Ismail Haniya, a senior leader of the Hamas resistance group vowed bloody retaliation for the killing. "Our response will be a new escalation in our resistance," he told reporters. Hamas’ smaller rival, Islamic Jihad, also expressed its ire, and both groups called on the Palestinian Authority to stop all its contacts with Israel.
"Members of one family were killed in cold blood," senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar told reporters as he stood beside the bodies of the dead in the morgue of Gaza’s main hospital. "When there are killings of Palestinian civilians, Israel can expect killings of its civilians," he said.
UN special coordinator for the Middle East Terje Roed-Larsen warned that the Palestinian population was facing an imminent "human catastrophe," and urged Israel to reconsider its security policies. He revealed preliminary figures on the soaring levels of unemployment, income losses and poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
