topic by
Barb
3/3/2002 (15:44) |
|
What are the neighboring countries doing about the violence?
************************
Israel Reels From Succession of Deadly Attacks
By Paul Holmes
Reuters
JERUSALEM (March 3) -- A lone gunman shot dead 10 Israelis, seven of them soldiers, at a checkpoint in the West Bank on Sunday, leaving Israel reeling from one of the worst surges of violence in its conflict with the Palestinians.
The deaths of 21 Israelis over 24 hours and spiralling bloodshed on both sides deepened doubts over the fate of a Saudi land-for-peace initiative to end fighting that has killed more than 1,200 people in 17 months.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi rejected the peace initiative on Saturday and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a crucial figure given Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, broke his silence on Sunday to voice misgivings over the plan.
The sniper struck in the early morning, just 12 hours after a teenage suicide bomber killed nine people, five of them children, on a Jerusalem street crowded with religious Jews leaving synagogues at the end of the Sabbath on Saturday night.
The twin attacks, and the shooting deaths of two Israelis in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, made it one of the highest Israeli tolls in a single day.
The army said the gunman had opened fire from a hill overlooking the remote checkpoint near the Jewish settlement of Ofra, picking off reinforcements as they rushed in to assist. Seven of the dead were soldiers and three were Jewish settlers.
Israel Radio, in a detail likely to embarrass the army, said the gunman had fled leaving behind a patched-up, ageing carbine rifle. Israeli television said soldiers had failed to locate the source of fire and at first shot back in the wrong direction.
'We were impressed by the calmness of the gunman,' said Ronny Sagi, a settler from Ofra who witnessed the shooting.
All four attacks were claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, as revenge for Israeli raids on two West Bank refugee camps that killed up to 30 Palestinians.
In retaliation, Israeli forces including helicopter gunships and tanks attacked Palestinian police and security targets in the West Bank, one several hundred metres (yards) from Arafat's office in Ramallah. At least four Palestinians were killed.
The mounting Israeli casualties were bound to raise pressure on embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take even tougher action against the Palestinian Authority and militants. He was meeting his inner security cabinet on Sunday.
TOUGH WORDS, BUT WHAT ACTION?
'We will strike with impunity every place they are,' said Raanan Gissin, Sharon's spokesman.
Sharon, a right-wing former general elected 13 months ago on a promise to make Israel a safe place to live, has seen his popularity plunge to an all-time low as Israelis lose faith in his ability to arrest an accelerating Israeli death toll.
Squeezed by conflicting pressures from a 'get-tough' right and a 'make-peace' left inside and outside his unity coalition, Sharon has been condemned from both sides for lacking a coherent policy, whether military or political.
Sharon ordered the raids into the Balata and Jenin refugee camps as a message to militants that they would have no hiding place, but as they wound down on Sunday commentators questioned whether the revenge they unleashed had outweighed the benefit.
Saturday's suicide bombing, carried out by an 18-year-old carpenter from the Dheisheh refugee camp near the West Bank town of Bethlehem, sickened Israelis but also sharpened their sense of vulnerability in their bloodiest conflict for a generation.
In a sign of the unease, shares on the Tel Aviv exchange closed down 1.3 percent on Sunday, with the gloom preventing stocks from following Wall Street's rise on Friday.
The checkpoint assault, following a similar roadblock shooting that killed six soldiers in the West Bank on February 19, was also certain to fuel debate over the army's strategy.
Israel insists the checkpoints, which dot the West Bank and cut through the Gaza Strip, are vital to prevent bombers and gunmen from launching attacks on its citizens. Palestinians regard them as a suffocating humiliation.
Leaders of the Palestinian uprising believe such attacks will eat away at support for Sharon and encourage a small but growing revolt by Israeli reserve soldiers who have begun to refuse to serve in the occupied territories.
'It is time the Israeli public woke up from being misled by Sharon,' Marwan al-Barghouthi, a senior Fatah official in the West Bank, told Reuters.
SYRIAN MISGIVINGS
At least 924 Palestinians and 305 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation broke out in late September 2000 after peace talks stalled.
The Saudi initiative, floated last month by Crown Prince Abdullah, offers Israel normal relations with the Arab world in return for a full withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights -- land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Syria's Assad did not directly address the plan in a statement issued after talks in Lebanon, but insisted among other principles that there could be no compromise on the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their land.
Differences over the fate of refugees and the status of Jerusalem were chief obstacles to a deal at previous Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Gaddafi rejected the Saudi plan on Saturday and threatened to quit the Arab League, which Abdullah wants to discuss the proposal at a summit in Beirut on March 27 and 28. He was having urgent talks with League Secretary-General Amr Moussa on Sunday.
Israel has long rejected a complete return to its 1967 borders on security grounds. While Sharon has voiced interest in the Saudi proposal, a senior Israeli political source on Sunday said it could get nowhere until Palestinian violence stopped.
13:41 03-03-02
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
|
|