TEL AVIV, May 29: Israel’s security cabinet met on Wednesday to weigh its response to a spate of Palestinian attacks, including the killing of three students at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
A resurgence of Palestinian attacks and Israeli raids could damage coordinated international efforts to revive peacemaking after 20 months of conflict, including signs that Washington will set out a negotiating timetable for the two sides.
In the latest attack, a Palestinian sneaked into the Itamar settlement, near Nablus, on Tuesday night and opened fire on a group of teenagers playing basketball at an Orthodox Jewish boarding school.
One student, Elhanan Amar, ran straight ahead to safety, but two of his friends made the fatal mistake of turning left towards the school building.
“I lay on the ground. I saw him fire at them for 15 seconds without stopping and then he shouted a bit afterwards... I recited psalms at this time,” he told Israel radio.
The attacker then went inside the building, where he killed another student and wounded two others, before he was shot dead by an Israeli guard and armed settlers.
Two of the dead youngsters were aged 17 and the third was 14, Army Radio said. They were all from West Bank settlements.
Hours earlier, a Palestinian had shot dead an Israeli who was driving along a West Bank road, and the Israeli army killed a Palestinian during a raid on the city of Jenin.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the two Palestinian attacks.
Palestinians regard settlers as a symbol of occupation and consider them legitimate targets. They have carried out numerous raids on settlements during their uprising against Israeli occupation.
A major forum in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement echoed his calls for an end to suicide attacks inside Israel, saying the bombings harmed the Palestinian struggle for a state.
“Military attacks inside the ‘green line’ (in Israel) must stop because they reflect negatively on the image of our national struggle,” the Fatah Revolutionary Council (FRC) said in a document issued after two weeks of internal discussions.
But the group expressed support for “resistance” in occupied parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
ISRAELI INCURSIONS: After the attacks, Israeli troops raided West Bank villages near Bethlehem on Tuesday night and re-entered the city of Qalqilya. The army said it had detained eight people.
“Israel will do what is necessary to defend its civilian population from these attacks,” government spokesman Dore Gold said as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened his security cabinet.
Sources close to the government said they expected no major announcements after the meeting and the policy of frequent army raids into Palestinian-ruled territory was likely to continue.
The Israeli shekel weakened to another new low against the dollar, in part due to fears the conflict would escalate. Since the start of the year the shekel has lost 14 per cent of its value against the dollar, partly because of the violence.—Reuters
