Israeli Military Kills 6 Palestinians
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military killed six Palestinians on Saturday, three in the West Bank whom it accused of killing a Jewish settler and three in Gaza who it said were crawling along the border wall planning an attack. It was the deadliest day in the conflict in nearly a year.
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, called it “a sad day for Palestinians and their National Authority” and condemned the West Bank operation as an “assassination” and “an attempt to target the state of security and stability that the Palestinian Authority has been able to achieve.”
Maj. Peter Lerner, spokesman for Israel’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank, said that its forces had spent the past two days looking for the killers of the settler, Rabbi Meir Hai, a 45-year-old teacher and father of seven, who was shot dead on Thursday as he drove near his home in the settlement of Shavei Shomron.
The information gathered, he said, led them to three men in the city of Nablus early Saturday. Troops in jeeps descended on their homes and in each case, he said, the suspect was asked to give himself up. None did so, and all were shot dead.
All three, he added, had been involved in anti-Israel violence in the past through activities in the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a militia associated with the Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
One of them, Annan Sleiman Moustafa Tsubakh, 36, was hiding with two assault rifles, two handguns and ammunition in a crawl space in his house when the Israeli troops found him.
Major Lerner said that the three were the killers of Rabbi Hai and that they acted as an isolated cell rather than as part of some larger organization. Asked if the Israelis had coordinated with the Palestinian security forces that had been patrolling West Bank cities for a year and a half, he said no, that the army’s job was first and foremost to protect Israeli civilians.
Ghassan Katib, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said Palestinian security had been investigating the killing when the Israelis interfered.
“This is what they do,” he said. “They kill people and then claim they were responsible. Our security forces had begun an investigation into the killing but the Israelis did not coordinate with us.”
Relatives of two of the three men who were in the houses when the raids occurred contended that the men were not armed and that the Israelis shot without warning. In the case of Mr. Tsubakh, relatives said they fled while he remained inside.
In the middle of the second Palestinian uprising in 2002 and 2003, drive-by shootings of settlers like the one that killed Rabbi Hai had become almost common in the West Bank. An Israeli clampdown and a Palestinian security focus — and greatly increased cooperation between the forces — have turned such attacks into a rarity and have led to a sense of increased personal security and potential prosperity.
But since the war in Gaza a year ago and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, peace talks have been suspended, and officials on both sides fear that violence may pick up again and that security coordination could decline.
Each side blames the other. Mr. Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, called on his people not to be “dragged into a circle of violence, chaos and instability.”
At the Nablus funeral procession on Saturday for the three killed, attended by thousands, some shouted for revenge and condemned the security coordination with the Israelis.
A man who claimed to speak for Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade issued a statement saying that by killing six Palestinians on Saturday, “the occupation forces have opened the doors of hell on themselves.”
The killing of the three Palestinians in Gaza occurred when Israeli soldiers guarding the border from inside Israel saw people crawling along the border barrier near the main civilian crossing point. Israel permits no such movement near its border.
The soldiers said they fired warning shots but the three continued to crawl. An Israeli aircraft then shot at the men and killed them, an army spokeswoman said. She added that the army was convinced that the men were planning an attack.
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