Israeli Raid Eclipses Peace Summit

By Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune

Jan. 5–JERUSALEM — An Israeli army raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah left four Palestinians dead and at least 20 wounded Thursday, casting a pall over a summit meeting in Egypt between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that was intended to promote new peace efforts.

The raid, the biggest in Ramallah in months, triggered heavy street clashes that were shown live across the Middle East on the Arab satellite television channel Al Jazeera. The images embarrassed the Egyptians as they prepared to receive Olmert and angered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who said the military action belied Israeli pledges of peace.

At a joint news conference with Olmert after their meeting at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, Mubarak said he had protested the raid to the Israeli leader.

“I expressed to the prime minister our displeasure with what happened today in Ramallah and emphasized that the security of Israel and of all the peoples of the region will only be achieved through efforts to achieve a just peace and by avoiding all measures that obstruct it,” Mubarak said.

Olmert apologized for any civilian casualties but said Israel had to prevent attacks on its citizens.

“Today’s operation was meant to arrest a terrorist who had murdered innocent Israelis, and it was accompanied by shots fired at the Israeli soldiers,” Olmert said. “Regrettably, matters developed in a way that certainly was not planned in advance. If uninvolved people were hurt, that of course was not our intention and desire.”

The raid in Ramallah came after a recent meeting between Olmert and Abbas in which Israel announced a series of goodwill measures to bolster the Palestinian leader and create better conditions for resuming talks.

“This operation proves that Israeli calls for peace and security are false,” Abbas said in a harshly worded statement. “The continued aggression will only lead to the destruction of all efforts aimed at realizing peace.” Abbas demanded $5 million in compensation for damage to shops and cars caused by the Israeli operation.

The Israeli army said that undercover troops had gone into a building near Ramallah’s central square and shot and wounded an armed militant who was wanted for attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. The militant, identified by Palestinians as Rabih Hamed, a member of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, escaped. Four other suspects were detained but later released, the army said.

Army reinforcements sent to the scene exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen and shot at youths who hurled rocks, cinderblocks and firebombs, the army said. Televised images of the fighting showed soldiers firing from inside armored jeeps and Palestinians evacuating casualties amid bursts of gunfire, booms of stun grenades and the wail of ambulance sirens.

A helicopter gunship was called in and fired between buildings as a deterrent, the army said. Army bulldozers cleared cars out of the way and overturned some onto sidewalks. Dozens of the vehicles were damaged, along with shops and vegetable stands.

Palestinians identified the four people killed as civilians, one of them a restaurant worker and another a visitor from Jordan. One of the wounded was a photographer for a local news agency who was shot in the head, according to reports from the scene.

The violence overshadowed the Egyptian-Israeli summit, which ended with no signs of movement toward reviving peace talks.

There was no apparent breakthrough on a key issue, the release of an Israeli soldier captured last year by militants from Hamas and two allied groups in the Gaza Strip. Egypt has been mediating contacts to arrange a prisoner exchange, but Mubarak and Olmert gave no indication of progress, saying only that they hoped the prisoners would be released soon.

Neither was there any announcement of plans for a four-way summit of Mubarak, Olmert, Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II to help restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli and Arab newspapers had reported an Egyptian initiative for the four-way meeting, but Mubarak attributed the idea to Olmert, saying the prime minister had previously proposed such a summit once agreement was reached on a prisoner exchange.

Olmert said that “any meeting in any combination, including the four of us … could certainly improve the atmosphere and promote chances for serious negotiations between us and the Palestinians.”

In the Gaza Strip, fighting flared between the rival factions Hamas and Fatah. A Palestinian security officer allied with Fatah was killed when Hamas militants surrounded his house, exchanged fire with his guards and attacked the building with rocket-propelled grenades, witnesses said.

The officer was identified as Col. Mohammed Gharib, chief of the Preventive Security Service in the northern Gaza Strip. The fighting outside the house raged for much of the day, killing two of Gharib’s guards and a Hamas gunman.

Moments before his death, Gharib appealed for help on Palestinian television as his house came under attack in the town of Beit Lahiya, The Associated Press reported. “They are killers,” he said. “They are targeting the house, children are dying, they are bleeding. For God’s sake, send an ambulance, we want an ambulance, somebody move.”

About three dozen people, including eight children, were wounded, according to local reports.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, returning from a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia after cutting short a tour of Arab nations, called for calm.

“Weapons must be directed only at the Israeli occupation,” he said.

The latest violence followed a series of incidents in the West Bank on Wednesday that raised factional tensions. In the most serious incident, gunmen kidnapped Deputy Health Minister Bashar Karmi of Hamas in the town of El-Bireh and released him five hours later, warning that continued fighting in Gaza would spread to the West Bank.

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