Hamas activists killed in battle with Palestinian police
Four Hamas supporters were killed in clashes with Palestinian police in Gaza, during internal strife that came just hours after an Israeli helicopter fired a missile that exploded on a crowded Gaza street, killing and wounding dozens.
There was no clear link between the two, although the violent Islamic Hamas group was the target in both cases.
Yesterday, two Hamas supporters were killed and another 18 were wounded during clashes between dozens of Palestinian police and Hamas supporters in the Nusseirat refugee camp.
Another two Hamas supporters were killed in clashes in Gaza city.
The violence followed the killing of a senior Palestinian police officer.
Chief of Palestinian riot police Col Rajeh Abu Lehiya was shot 10 times after being abducted at a roadblock set up by gunmen disguised as police officers. The Palestinian Authority blamed Hamas for the attack.
Violence in Nusseirat followed reports that the police officer’s kidnappers came from that camp.
Hamas, which rejects the concept of a Jewish state in the Middle East, has always opposed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s policy of negotiating peace with Israel. However, the two sides have rarely descended into armed conflict.
Israel claims Arafat is not doing enough to stop attacks by Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel over two years of fighting.
Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority denounced Israel for its incursion yesterday into the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, which left 14 Palestinians dead and more than 110 wounded.
Most of the casualties occurred at the end of the raid, when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile that exploded in a crowded street.
Palestinians said most or all of the casualties were civilians who streamed into the street to inspect damage from the incursion after they heard Israeli tanks withdrawing. The Israeli military countered that soldiers returned fire at gunmen who shot at them and threw grenades as they withdrew.
Calling the Israeli operation a massacre, Palestinians accused Israel of attacking every time there was a move toward restoring calm.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said Israel purposely sabotaged peace efforts “because the end game of the Israeli government is to resume full occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar said that ”there have been too many instances where it looks like something is progressing, or there is quiet, (and) something happens that restarts the bloodshed”.
Despite the high death toll, Israel justified the operation.
Brig Gen. Yisrael Ziv, the Israeli military commander in the area, said the region was a Hamas stronghold. “The goal was to operate in this terror base to show there is no safe place for a terrorist in the Gaza Strip,” he told reporters.
International criticism of Israel’s latest military action in a populated Palestinian area centred on the civilian toll.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the US government was “deeply troubled” by the civilian casualties, but endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself.
The Russian foreign ministry said the scale of the operation, “in particular the use of tanks and aviation in a highly populated region, was clearly disproportionate”.
And Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief who is visiting the region, said he was shocked by the number of casualties. “I think that it is even more dramatic because of the efforts that the Palestinian people were making in order to get out of the way of violence in recent weeks,” he said. Last night he discussed peace efforts in a meeting with Arafat.
Deputy Israeli defence minister Weizman Shiri said the operation was “very successful”. If civilians or innocent people were hurt, we can only regret it,” he told Israel TV.
