Israel vowed on Monday to carry on its offensive against militants after the army shot dead three Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, sparking condemnation from the Palestinian Authority.
The latest deaths, during shootouts with Israeli troops in Kabatiya, came shortly after an Islamic Jihad official in the Gaza Strip said the group would abide by an informal truce following a deadly week of violence.
Two Jihad militants were killed and eight other Palestinians injured in an army raid late on Sunday in Kabatiya, the home town of an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber who killed five Israelis in an attack last Wednesday.
Arshad Abu Zeid (21) and Jihad Zahaneh (22) had been wanted in connection with the Hadera suicide attack — the first such deadly strike since Israel withdrew its ground troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip last month.
A third man was shot dead after Israeli troops spotted several Palestinians placing a bomb in the street.
The men opened fire at the troops as they tried to flee, the army said. Israeli troops shot back and killed one Palestinian.
Twelve Palestinians have now been killed in Israeli army operations and air strikes since the suicide bombing in the northern Israeli town of Hadera.
Israel’s pull-out from Gaza in September had raised hopes in the international community of a genuine breakthrough in the peace process but such optimism has steadily crumbled amid persistent violence.
A senior official told Agence France Presse that Israel would continue to take action against militants as long as the Palestinian Authority did nothing.
”If the Palestinian Authority continues to do nothing about terrorism, we will,” an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said.
”We are waiting for the Palestinians to decide to dismantle terrorist organisations before renewing contacts at the leadership level and moving forward,” the source added.
However, the official stressed that recent comments by Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz that Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas was not a partner for peace was his ”personal opinion” and not that of the government.
The Palestinian interior ministry condemned the Kabatiya shootings, which it said threatened an informal and tenuous truce that militant groups have been observing ad hoc since the beginning of the year.
”This Israeli terrorist operation against our people will not help bring security and quiet… and threatens the quiet understanding which the Palestinian leadership and people want to protect,” it said.
A Jihad official in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Harzin, warned of armed retaliation and accused Israel of ”having violated the truce anew”.
The head of an umbrella grouping of factions had on Sunday announced that all groups had decided to return to a de facto truce in place since the beginning of the year and urged the international community to stop Israeli aggression.
But the senior Israeli official said any declaration of a ceasefire by Palestinian groups was ”an agreement that does not concern Israel. It is a domestic Palestinian matter”.
After a relative lull on Sunday, militants in Gaza fired five makeshift rockets into Israel’s southern Negev desert early on Monday, without causing casualties or damage, police said.
A joint statement from Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas’s ruling Fatah party, and the Popular Resistance Committees claimed to have fired rockets into Israel. – AFP
