JERUSALEM, 4 July 2004 — Israeli troops shot and killed yesterday two Palestinian boys, including a nine-year-old, pushing ahead with a broad military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Nine-year-old Ehab Shatat was killed by machine-gun fire, apparently from a tank-mounted gun, while standing close to his home in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza, Palestinian hospital and security officials said.
The army said it had fired warning shots at a Palestinian mob that approached soldiers in a threatening manner, but was not aware that anyone was hit.
Hours later, troops killed a 16-year-old boy, who Palestinian hospital and security officials said was also apparently shot by a machine gun. The army said troops shot and killed a teenager who was throwing cement blocks at soldiers.
The army raided Beit Hanoon on Monday after two Israelis died in a rocket attack. The deaths were the first in a rocket attack since fighting erupted more than four years ago. Six Palestinians have been killed in Beit Hanoon since the raid started.
Troops have isolated Beit Hanoon from the rest of Gaza and razed agricultural land.
Although the army has not restricted the movement of residents in the town center, farmers cannot access their land and all entrances to the town have been closed off. Troops took over three factories in the industrial zone, which have been turned into makeshift headquarters.
Despite the army’s activities, Palestinians have managed to fire barrages nearly every day, wounding several people. Three rockets were fired while Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was visiting the family of the boy who was killed in Sderot.
Yesterday, the fifth day of the army’s activities in Beit Hanoon, Palestinians again fired a rocket into Israel. The rocket landed in an open field just inside Israel, injuring no one, the army said.
Palestinians have been firing from Gaza the highly inaccurate, homemade rockets for more than two years, but never killed anyone until Monday.
The army and Palestinian groups said the rockets had been upgraded to make them deadlier.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli troops shot and killed a 20-year-old Palestinian in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.
Palestinian sources said Mahmoud Alahwani — whose younger brother was killed by troops 10 days ago — was throwing stones at troops when they opened fire on the demonstrators.
A 26-year-old Palestinian civilian wounded in May during an Israeli operation in the Zeitoon neighborhood of Gaza died of wounds yesterday, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Chief of Staff Hassan Abu Lebda revealed yesterday that the Palestinian Authority has a full security plan in place to take over the Gaza Strip once Israel withdraws.
Lebda told “Voice of Palestine” radio that the plan aims at re-establishing the security situation that existed before the outbreak of Intifada in September 2000.
He said that the different Palestinian factions had been involved in coordinating the plan, which would be implemented within five weeks.
Within that time the Palestinian police and security forces would redeploy throughout the Gaza Strip in any area evacuated by the Israeli Army, he said.
In another development, a prominent Arab Israeli MP yesterday began an open-ended hunger strike against Israel’s continued construction of its controversial separation wall across the West Bank, the deputy said.
MP Azmi Bishara, who heads the Balad faction in the Israeli Parliament, said he began the hunger strike early yesterday in a bid to draw world attention to the harm being done to local Palestinians by the wall.
“I want to draw world public opinion and the attention of the Arab world to the crime which is being committed by building the wall, particularly in Jerusalem,” Bishara said by telephone from the village of A-Ram, just north of Jerusalem.
