OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 12 April 2003 — In one of the most tangible signs of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in months, Palestinian police handed over to Israel weapons confiscated from militant groups even as the intifada continued to rage yesterday in the Gaza Strip.
Seven people were hurt yesterday, including a British peace activist who was reported in critical condition after being shot by Israeli soldiers.
It was the third incident involving members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in a month.
According to the Israeli Army, Palestinian police in the eastern West Bank city of Jericho had handed over weapons seized from armed militant groups.
“The Palestinians in Jericho handed over a stack of weapons, including 12 empty gas canisters filled with explosives, around 50 home-made grenades and an anti-tank rocket,” the Israeli Army said in a statement.
The move came just two months after the army lifted a blockade imposed on Jericho, the only major town to have escaped Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank in June 2002.
The Israeli tabloid Maariv said yesterday the deal had been approved by several Palestinian officials, including newly-appointed Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas.
The United States and Israel have pushed for the creation of Abbas’ power-sharing position, pinning their hopes on the dovish veteran to sideline Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and take concrete steps to end the 30-month-old cycle of bloodshed.
Maariv quoted Israeli military chief of staff Moshe Yaalon as saying “the Palestinian leadership has understood terrorism would not help them achieve their objectives.”
Abbas has repeatedly called for an end to the armed struggle against Israeli occupation, making him very unpopular with radical militant groups.
But while the number of anti-Israeli attacks has fallen sharply in recent months, Palestinian casualties from Israeli operations have continued to rise in the Gaza Strip, where violence flared again yesterday.
Israeli helicopters fired several missiles on a cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, wounding one Palestinian, medical sources said.
An army patrol then opened fire on a crowd that had gathered near the location of the strike, lightly wounding another two, the sources said, adding the soldiers searched the vault of a collective grave for militants and weapons.
Another missile was fired moments later and landed unexploded by the house of member of the military wing of the hard-line group Hamas, the Ezzedin Al-Qassam Brigades, the sources said.
Some 5,000 Palestinians attended the funeral of a militant leader killed in an Israeli air strike on Thursday, two days after a military leader for another hard-line movement was slain in a similar operation.
The two raids killed another six Palestinians and wounded scores, most of them civilians.
Further south, in the border town of Rafah, a 21-year-old British ISM activist was critically wounded by Israeli soldiers who opened fire with a heavy machinegun from their tank.
The ISM is a group of pro-Palestinian activists who engage in non-violent action to protect civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
On April 5, Israeli troops opened fire on two of them in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, seriously wounding an American and injuring a Danish man more lightly.
And last month, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old US national also volunteering with the ISM, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house.
The Israeli Army said it was an “accident” but has yet to reveal the result of its investigation into her death, while witnesses all charged she was deliberately run over.
