GAZA CITY: Israeli jets hit seven targets in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip early Friday, killing three men and wounding four, Palestinian medics said.
The casualties occurred near Gaza’s border with Egypt when Israeli jets bombed tunnels which Palestinians use to bring goods into the besieged coastal strip, medics and Hamas security officials said. The Israeli military confirmed it conducted air raids in response to rocket and mortar fire into Israel, which caused no casualties.
The Israeli planes hit two tunnels in Rafah and another tunnel near Gaza City designed “for infiltration into Israeli territory in order to execute a terrorist attack,” the military said in a statement.
On Thursday, Israeli planes dropped thousands of leaflets over the Gaza Strip warning residents to steer clear of the border after Palestinian fighters fired mortar rounds into Israel.
The letters, which were dropped over northern Gaza and Gaza City, warned residents not to go within 300 meters of the heavily secured border with Israel.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia denied reports it had joined Egypt in Palestinian reconciliation efforts, according to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement issued in Riyadh on Friday.
An official source told the Saudi Press Agency that “Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal’s statements in both Riyadh and Cairo affirmed that the reconciliation is fully in the hands of the Egyptian brethren” and that he hoped the Egyptian initiative would be successful in restoring Palestinian unity.
In another development, the Obama administration on Friday began a flurry of activity aimed at reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, after its Middle East diplomatic debut fell flat last year.
Accompanied by Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet in Washington with Foreign Ministers Nasser Judeh of Jordan and Ahmed Abul Gheit of Egypt, the main Arab peace brokers, officials said.
Mitchell will then leave on late Sunday for Paris and Brussels for consultations with allies, including a meeting of the Quartet of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, they added.
The meeting of the Middle East Quartet — which launched a road map for peace in 2003 calling for the creation of a Palestinian state living alongside a secure Israel — will take place in Brussels.
Mitchell will then return to the United States before heading to the Middle East by the end of the month, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters announcing the flurry of talks.
Days after entering the White House in January last year, President Barack Obama signaled that Arab-Israeli peace was a top priority, but Crowley acknowledged that efforts hit a “rough patch” late last year.
Crowley said the Obama administration wanted to “share ideas” about how to get talks started.
“Clearly the first step in this process is to get the two sides back to formal negotiations and also find a variety of ways to address the very concrete issues” concerning both sides, he said.
Also on Friday, human rights group Amnesty International urged Israel to release or fairly try three Palestinians jailed for protesting against the West Bank wall.
The three, two of whom are held without charges, may be “prisoners of conscience, held for legitimately voicing their opposition to the fence/wall,” Amnesty said in a letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
“These men have all been involved in campaigning against the building of this construction, much of it on the land of the occupied West Bank, and we fear that this is the real reason for their imprisonment,” said Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Program. “If this is the case they must be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign, has not been charged with any offense since his arrest on Dec. 16 and has not had access to his lawyer. He is being held under Israeli military law, which applies to the occupied West Bank.
“As someone who holds a Jerusalem ID card, according to Israeli law his case should be handled under the country’s civil, not military, legal system,” the London-based human rights watchdog said.
Mohammed Othman is also being held without charge since Sept. 22. He was arrested upon his return from Norway where he met activist groups and campaigned against the wall, Amnesty said.
Abdullah Abu Rahma, who heads Popular Committee Against the Wall in the West Bank village of Bilin, was arrested on Dec. 10.
He has been charged with incitement, stone throwing, and possession of arms, the latter for collecting spent cartridges and tear gas grenades used by Israeli forces to disperse anti-wall protesters.
“These three men are all well known for their defense of the human rights of Palestinians. In the unlikely event that there are genuine grounds to prosecute these men, they should be charged with recognizable criminal offenses and brought promptly to trial in full conformity with international fair trial standards,” said Smart.
