RAMALLAH, West Bank, 5 January 2007 — Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, killing four Palestinian civilians and detaining four wanted men, hours before an Israeli-Egyptian summit on peacemaking.
Smoke rose over central Ramallah after Israeli armored vehicles and bulldozers, slamming aside parked cars near the main Manara Square, pushed into the city to carry out what an Israeli Army spokeswoman called “routine arrest activity.”
The raid was the biggest in Ramallah since May, when four Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. Palestinians responded to the latest incursion with gunfire and rocks.
Palestinian security sources said an Israeli helicopter had poured machine-gun fire into a building near Manara Square. An Israeli Army spokesman said the helicopter had fired at “an open area,” not at a structure.
Hospital officials said at least 25 people had been wounded before Israeli forces withdrew.
A senior leader of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group in Fatah, said the Israeli operation was aimed at capturing one of its top members.
In a separate incursion in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Israeli forces wounded one Palestinian and took him into custody, Palestinian security officials said.
Israel frequently carries out raids in the West Bank to detain suspected fighters, but largely stays out of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak firmly condemned the Israeli raid as he met with Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert in a summit aimed at reviving the long-stalled peace process.
“Israel’s security cannot be achieved through military force but by serious endeavors toward peace,” Egypt’s state-run news agency, MENA, quoted Mubarak as telling Olmert during their meeting in Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
The Egyptian leader also called for “the immediate halt of all acts of violence and any practices that will impede (Egyptian) efforts” to bring peace, MENA said.
Olmert expressed regret. “I regret if the innocent were touched in Ramallah, but Israel is obligated to carry out such operations to reinforce its security,” Olmert told a joint news conference with Mubarak after their talks.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas slammed the Israeli army incursion. “The operation proves that Israeli calls for peace and security are false,” Abbas said in a statement.
At Sharm El-Sheikh, Olmert and Mubarak discussed efforts to free a captured Israeli soldier, but Israeli officials said there was no breakthrough on the prisoner issue.
Egypt blamed Palestinian indecision for the apparent lack of progress on the issue. Hours before the summit, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: “They (the Palestinians) are the ones holding the Israeli soldier. Israel wants this soldier. Israel is offering some measures. What is needed today is for the Palestinian side... to decide. There is no development on this issue (the prisoner exchange). What is being offered is an exchange deal, but unfortunately there are some Palestinian powers who think that the situation is not yet ready for this exchange.”
But Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking in Gaza, said there was “substantial progress” in the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
“The Israelis used to refuse reciprocity and now they agree. They used to refuse simultaneous prisoner exchanges and now they agree. They used to refuse to talk about numbers and now they agree,” Haniyeh said.
