OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 July 2003 — The discovery of a young soldier’s body in Israel yesterday threatened to rattle a month-old truce, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reached Washington with a package of conciliatory measures toward the Palestinians.
The corpse of 20-year-old Oleg Shayhat, who went missing on July 21 after leaving his base, was found buried in an olive grove near two Arab villages in northern Israel, police said.
Although no group claimed responsibility for the killing, Israeli police have focused their investigation on Arab militants.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, present at a search coordination center, said on the radio that Israel would decide “what measures to take after having studied all the details of the case”.
Further tension built up on the ground yesterday when foreign activists staged a demonstration against a barrier being built between Israel and the West Bank that turned violent. Five activists were wounded, although none was reported in serious condition, when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of 500 Palestinians led by about 100 members of the International Solidarity Movement. They had torn down a gate in the barrier which cuts off villages from their farmlands, plunging the area deeper into economic crisis.
The Israeli Defense Ministry, meanwhile, announced that it has canceled an official ceremony which was due to inaugurate the first section on Thursday.
The decision is thought to have been made in order not to upset US President George W. Bush who charged last week that the barrier, which takes the form of a wire fence and a concrete wall at times, was hampering peace efforts.
But Israel’s Finance Ministry yesterday approved the release of $170 million for the fence, a parliamentary spokesman said.
Analyst Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan university, near Tel Aviv, predicted that Bush would pressurize Sharon to give ground on the issue but Sharon could only make limited concessions given strong public support for the project.
