Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on Thursday of wrecking the prospects of peace after soldiers killed five militants and officials unveiled plans to expand the largest West Bank settlement.
The shootings, Israel’s first deadly operation since the historic pull-out of settlers from Gaza, came as a British Jew was stabbed to death by a lone Arab in the first fatal Palestinian attack in Jerusalem’s Old City in three years.
The bloodshed and plans to build a major new Israeli police station in the West Bank deflated international optimism that the evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza would help revive the stagnant Middle East peace process.
”We strongly condemn this crime, and the Israeli side will be responsible for any consequences,” Abbas said.
”This policy of the Israelis is destroying the peace process and the ceasefire,” he added in reference to an unofficial truce by militant groups.
The five gunmen, one from Islamic Jihad and the rest members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that is loosely affiliated to Abbas’s Fatah party, were shot dead when an overnight arrest operation disintegrated into a fierce shootout.
Israel said all five belonged to Islamic Jihad and were wanted in connection with a suicide bombing last month that killed four Israelis, claimed by the Islamist faction.
An army spokesperson said the five, one of them a top Jihad official, were killed late on Wednesday in the northern West Bank Tulkarem refugee camp.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had warned on the eve of the Gaza pull-out that Israel would respond more harshly than ever against militant violence unless the Palestinian Authority clamped down on armed groups in the future.
”To a hand offered in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if they choose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever,” he said.
In Jerusalem, a young Jewish seminary student from London was killed and his American classmate injured when a Palestinian stabbed them with a kitchen knife in the Old City near Jaffa Gate.
The attacker managed to escape.
”Without doubt, this attack was committed by a lone Palestinian who was not part of any movement, which will make the search for him more difficult,” Ezra told army radio.
It was the first deadly Palestinian attack since Israel removed all Jewish settlers from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements, ahead of the process of dismantling its military bases and ending its near four-decade occupation.
The international community has warned Israel that the pull-out of settlers can only be a beginning, and called for a resumption of talks on the road map aimed at establishing an independent and viable Palestinian state.
But an Israeli official on Thursday announced plans to build a new police headquarters close to Israel’s largest West Bank settlement, after kicking up a storm by appropriating Palestinian land for its huge separation barrier.
”The construction project for a police HQ and an access road has obtained all the necessary authorisations and will begin shortly,” said a military spokesperson responsible for civil affairs in the West Bank.
The building will be erected on public land between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement.
Sharon has said that after the Gaza pull-out Israel will expand and develop its largest settlement blocs in the West Bank, which the Palestinians want to make the bulk of their future state.
Plans announced last March plans to build 3 500 new houses in Maale Adumim will effectively cut off Palestinian areas of the West Bank from occupied east Jerusalem. The project has been slammed by the international community.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia called Israeli plans for the Jerusalem area ”very dangerous”.
”No Muslim, no Arab and no one who is interested in peace can accept this and there must be very rapid moves from the international community because it has more significance than what Israel has been doing in Gaza.” — Sapa-AFP