GAZA CITY, 5 November — After a period of relative calm, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians flared again yesterday, with Israeli fire claiming eight Palestinian lives in 24 hours and a suicide bomber killing one person in Israel.
In the West Bank town of Nablus, a senior military leader of the Hamas resistance group and another man were killed when their car was blown up in the west of the city. The blast, which also injured two bystanders, was blamed on Israel. The Hamas leader was identified as Hamed Sadr, 35, whose nephew killed himself and three Israeli soldiers in a bomb attack on the Jewish settlement of Ariel last week.
Witnesses said a drone was overflying the area when the explosion blew the car, which had yellow Israeli license plates, to pieces. A Palestinian security official accused Israel of “booby trapping the car and blowing it up by remote control.”
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat denounced the explosion as “a war crime reflecting Israel’s desire to carry on its assassinations which are aimed at destroying the Palestinian people.” A few hours later, a bomber blew himself up in the Israeli town of Kfar Saba, on the northeastern rim of metropolitan Tel Aviv and only five kilometers from the reoccupied Palestinian town of Qalqilya. The bomber killed one other person and injured around a dozen, according to rescue services quoted by Israeli television.
In the Gaza Strip earlier, five Palestinians were killed. Three were shot dead overnight by Israeli forces on the border between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, an army spokesman told reporters yesterday. The three men allegedly entered a restricted zone near the border fence between the Gaza Strip and the Israeli kibbutz, or collective village, of Nahal Oz and Israeli forces opened fire, the spokesman said.
Another two men were killed in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt. One was shot dead late Sunday after Israeli troops saw him behaving suspiciously and entering the prohibited security zone around a roadblock manned by Israeli soldiers. A second man was shot in the town later last evening, in circumstances which were not clear, hospital sources said. Ahmed Abdelkadr Othman, 24, was shot in the head and died shortly afterward.
Israel’s Arab neighbors worried yesterday the narrow extreme right-wing coalition being forged by the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be the most extreme in its history and plunge the region into a deeper blood bath. The strongest criticism could be heard in Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries to have made peace with Israel. “All indications are that the next coalition led by Sharon ... will be the most extreme and aggressive in the history of the Hebrew state,” Egypt’s government Al-Ahram newspaper said.
Sharon survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament yesterday, allowing him to press ahead with efforts to shore up his minority government with far-right coalition partners. Parliament voted down three no-confidence motions brought by left-wing and other opposition parties that could have toppled the government and led to new elections.
