JENIN, West Bank, 8 November 2004 — Four Palestinians were shot dead in their car yesterday by undercover Israeli agents in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian medical and security sources said.
The four men — three members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a member of the Islamic Jihad faction — died instantly in the drive-by shooting.
They included Al-Aqsa Brigades fighters Maher Abu Kamel and Mohammed Masharka, whose family homes were dynamited earlier in the day by Israeli forces in Jenin. The other victims were named as Al-Aqsa Brigades fighter Mahmud Sami and Islamic Jihad activist Fadi Iqbari. All the victims were in their 20s.
Witnesses said that more than a dozen Israeli military vehicles arrived on the scene immediately after the shooting, which took place in the birthplace and stronghold of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, a radical offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.
Since August 2002 the Israeli Army bulldozers have dynamited hundreds of houses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a policy which rights groups say amounts to collective punishment.
Other witnesses said the troops who carried out the killings had been dressed in Arab clothing. Israeli troops have carried out a number of “targeted killing operations” in recent months, including the assassination of two overall leaders of the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.
A military source said that an army unit had been taking part in an arrest operation in Jenin when an exchange of fire broke out. A number of Palestinians were hit but the source had no further details about casualties. Israel is preparing for a possible escalation in violence following the death of Arafat, but the Palestinian leadership is working to prevent such a scenario, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday.
“It seems the old guard has taken matters to hand, and it appears they are controlling the situation and have a desire to reach internal agreement on the day after Arafat dies,” Mofaz was quoted as telling fellow ministers at yesterday’s weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
In another development, Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah said yesterday it flew an unmanned spy plane over northern Israel yesterday, marking a new development in the low-level cross-border conflict. Hezbollah said the move was in retaliation for repeated violations of Lebanese airspace by Israel which it branded “Zionist attacks on Lebanese sovereignty,” and warned of more such flights.
“A Mirsad-1 reconnaissance plane from the Islamic Resistance (the group’s armed wing) overflew airspace in northern Palestine ... and overflew a large number of Zionist settlements up to Nahariya, before returning to base safe and sound,” the Shiite Muslim group said in a statement.
