HEBRON, West Bank, 16 November 2002 — At least 11 Israelis were killed and some 14 wounded in ambushes on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron last night as settlers walked home from prayers, police and emergency services said. At around 7:30 p.m. (1730 GMT), an undetermined number of gunmen opened fire on settlers near the settlement of Kiryat Arba on the eastern outskirts. At least three settlers were killed, medics said, and several wounded.
The attack appeared to be the most serious against Israelis in the divided city since the start of a Palestinian uprising for statehood more than two years ago. It raised the specter of heavy retaliation by Israel’s extreme right-wing government. The security sources said Palestinian gunmen had opened fire and thrown hand grenades at a group of settlers heading toward the center of the city, where they had planned to attend Friday night prayers.
Soldiers who rushed to the scene also came under fire and several were killed or wounded, Army Radio said. The security sources put the number of Israeli dead at 11 and said some 15 people were wounded. A heavy gunbattle between troops and Palestinians erupted after the incident and Israeli flares lit the night sky, witnesses said.
Earlier in the day, in the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers had shot dead a Palestinian in a crowd of stone-throwers, Palestinian witnesses said. The army said soldiers had opened fire after a Palestinian threw an explosive device. Israeli forces launched a sweep for activists in Nablus on Wednesday after a Palestinian shot dead five people, including a mother and her two young sons, in a kibbutz three days earlier.
In the village of Anza, near the West Bank city of Tulkarm, Israeli troops killed a militant from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, witnesses said. The surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence, coinciding with a stormy campaign for an Israeli general election on Jan. 28, is expected to delay international peacemaking and deepen regional uncertainty ahead of a possible US war on Iraq.
Tanks, backed by armored vehicles and two helicopters, rolled into the village of Zababideh, near Jenin in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said. A militant from Arafat’s Fatah faction was wounded and arrested, while seven members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were also captured.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah on Thursday night, the Israeli Army made 35 arrests at a Ramadan evening gathering, Palestinian security sources said. The army said 17 Hamas activists were rounded up.
In another development, the Islamic group Hamas said it would halt suicide attacks in Israel if the army stopped its raids in the territories, in a rare sign that it was ready to reconsider its position. A senior Hamas official told reporters after talks in Cairo with Fatah representatives that his group was ready to stop suicide attacks if the Israeli army “puts an end to incursions into the West Bank and Gaza, arrests and the killing of civilians.”
Israel has consistently refused a Hamas deal that does not include safety for its citizens in the occupied territories, but the army acknowledged that the radical movement even having sat down with Fatah was a positive sign. Following last Sunday’s attack on a kibbutz in which five Israeli were killed, the army sent 150 armored vehicles into the northern West Bank town of Nablus on Wednesday and captured the suspected mastermind of the shooting the next day. The situation was relatively calm in Nablus yesterday as the army was apparently preparing for an operation similar to a two-week sweep of Jenin that ended Saturday with the killing of an Islamic Jihad chief accused of masterminding deadly anti-Israeli attacks.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has blamed his nation’s own imperial past for the chronic troubles of the Middle East, in an interview published yesterday in the New Statesman magazine. “A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past,” said Straw, a key player in securing a tough new UN disarmament resolution against Saddam Hussein.
“The odd lines for Iraq’s borders were drawn by Brits,” he said. “The Balfour Declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis — again, an interesting history for us, but not an honorable one,” he added. (The Independent)
