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Three Israelis, one Palestinian shot dead in W.Bank

Posted on: Sunday, 16 October 2005, 14:57 CDT

By Nael al-Shyouki

GUSH ETZION, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis in a drive-by shooting and Israeli troops shot dead a senior Palestinian militant in an eruption of violence in the occupied West Bank on Sunday.

The killings, a month after Israel completed a pullout from the Gaza Strip, tore at a flimsy ceasefire and raised fears of a resurgence in violence in the West Bank where Jewish settlements continue to grow on land Palestinians want for a state.

Hoped-for peacemaking momentum from the withdrawal has not transpired. A Middle East summit has been postponed. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet U.S. President George W. Bush this week to discuss how to resuscitate a "road map" peace plan.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Abbas' Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the shootings outside Gush Etzion settlement bloc and Eli settlement, the first of their kind in four months.

"This is taste of even more to come," al-Aqsa said in a statement, calling the attacks revenge for Israel's killing of militants.

Israeli officials said the army would re-impose some restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank that had been lifted as part of rapprochement efforts in recent months.

A Defense Ministry source said troops would encircle major West Bank cities and require that Palestinians travel between them by public transportation only, rather than private cars.

"We will reconsider this measure if the Palestinian Authority cracks down on terrorists," the source said.

In the far north of the West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead an Islamic Jihad militant commander after he opened fire on them, Palestinian witnesses and Israeli military sources said. There were no Israeli casualties in the clash, south of Jenin.

HIGH TENSION IN WEST BANK

Three Israelis were killed in the Gush Etzion attack and four were hurt, medics said. Minutes later, Palestinian gunmen fired on a road junction outside Eli, wounding two Israelis. The identities of the casualties were not immediately clear.

"A Palestinian passed by in a car, let off a burst of fire, and struck down people standing at the hitchhiking post," Shaul Goldstein, a settler leader in Gush Etzion, told Israel Radio.

Palestinian militants had vowed to avenge a series of Israeli army arrest raids that netted hundreds of their comrades in the West Bank since the Gaza pullout.

The ambushes could embarrass Abbas just before his talks with Bush at the White House on Thursday. Abbas has been under U.S. and Israeli pressure to rein in and disarm militants as a condition for "road map" negotiations on Palestinian statehood.

Senior Palestinian officials bemoaned the roadside attacks but also condemned the killing of the Jenin militant leader.

"These shootings tend to undermine our efforts to revive the peace process and serves neither the interests of the Palestinians nor the Israelis," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters.

"We will exert maximum efforts in order to sustain the cessation of violence," he said.

Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the drive-by shootings reflected a "tactical change whereby they (militants) refrain from activity in Gaza and intensify activity in the West Bank."

The last such attack was in June, when Palestinian gunmen killed two teenage Jewish settlers in a drive-by ambush at a hitchhiking post near Hebron, not far from Sunday's ambush.

It was the worst single day of violence since August 24 when five Palestinians were killed in a West Bank raid by Israeli troops and a British Jew was stabbed to death by a Palestinian.

Militant factions entered into a de facto ceasefire at Abbas's behest early this year to smooth the Gaza pullout and help revive peace diplomacy. The deal has greatly reduced but not halted violence in a revolt that erupted in 2000.

Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank for a future state and Arab East Jerusalem for a capital. All three were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

(additional reporting by Dan Williams, Cynthia Johnston, Tali Caspi in Jerusalem and Wael al-Ahmad in Jenin)

Source: REUTERS

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