GAZA, 17 December 2002 — Israeli soldiers shot dead four Palestinians, including two Hamas members, in and around Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian witnesses said.
They said troops killed the two Hamas men as they tried to sneak through a security fence into Israel near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun and killed another Palestinian as he walked past an army checkpoint. Troops killed the fourth Palestinian near the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah.
With Middle East violence showing no sign of abating, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would invite Palestinian leaders to London in January to try to move peace efforts forward.
“It will discuss progress on reform and look at how the international community can help,” he told Parliament in Britain. A senior Palestinian official said Arafat has accepted the invitation and will draw up the list of members of the delegation.
Palestinian leaders say Palestinian elections called for January may be delayed because of Israel’s tight hold on cities reoccupied by troops. A meeting due to decide whether or not to delay the Palestinian legislative and presidential elections slated for Jan. 20 will be held on Thursday, said the head of the Palestinian elections committee.
The meeting of the nine-member committee was originally scheduled for yesterday but was pushed back to Thursday after Israel said it would allow the three Gaza-based members of the committee to travel to Ramallah for the first time since the body was set up in October, committee secretary-general Ali Jerbawi told AFP.
In Nablus, 10 Palestinian boys were wounded yesterday in clashes which erupted when youths began lobbing rocks at Israeli tanks. Three were in critical condition after the army opened fire with heavy machine guns, sources said.
Meanwhile, a United Nations inquiry has found that, contrary to claims by the Israeli Army, eight of the 10 Palestinians killed in a raid in the Gaza Strip were unarmed civilians.
There was fury among Palestinians at the high death toll and the timing of the raid on Bureij refugee camp, which came during Eid Al-Fitr. At the time, the Israeli Army claimed most of those killed were armed, but a UN inquiry has found that was not true, according to UN sources. The aim of the raid was to demolish the home of one wanted Palestinian and capture others, the army said.
The UN ordered its own inquiry because two of the dead were employees of UNRWA, a UN agency which provides humanitarian relief to Palestinian refugees.
In another development, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Israeli security forces had thwarted an attempt by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to assassinate Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud party. (The Independent)
