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Palestinians Mourn Dead As Hamas Vows To Continue Resistance
EZNA, West Bank, July 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An emotionally charged crowd of 10,000 Palestinians gathered Friday for the burial of the three Palestinians shot dead Thursday - including a three-month-old baby - by suspected Jewish extremists.
Crying out for vengeance, mourners packed the funeral route and nearby rooftops screaming, "We will die and Palestine will live!" as the bodies of the three, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were brought from Hebron to this West Bank village.
"I have waited 12 years to have this child," wept the mother of baby Diya al-Tmeizi as her infant son was carried to his grave. "Now all I can do is weep for him as I weep for the other Palestinians who are sacrificing themselves."
Many in the crowd waved photos of his corpse lying in a pool of blood after the killing, which was claimed by an extremist group called the Committee for Road Safety with links to Jewish settlers and the outlawed anti-Arab movement Kach.
Masked men fired automatic weapons in the air as members of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for the majority of attacks against Israel in recent years, passed out leaflets vowing to avenge their deaths.
"These Zionist crimes will not weaken us," the leaflet read. "We will continue our jihad [holy struggle] and resistance. We will teach the Zionist enemy one lesson after another until they realize we are a people who cannot be defeated."
Palestinian security officials brought the bodies from the al-Ahli hospital to the center of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron in ambulances, where a crowd of some 5,000 gathered to escort them to Ithna.
Some 5,000 more joined the procession along the way, with many in the crowd screaming, "Death to settlers, to Israel and to America."
Businesses and shops in Hebron - a regular site of violence since the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation began 10 months ago - remained closed in mourning.
The settler extremists, who fired automatic weapons from an overtaking car, also killed Mohammad Salameh al-Tmeizi and Mohammad Hilmy al-Tmeizi, both in their early 20s, and wounded four other members of the family, including at least one other child and Salameh's new wife.
Police said the attackers, whose white car bore Israeli license plates, sped away after the killing, crashing through an Israeli checkpoint on the way.
The Committee for Road Safety's claim on the attack actually came before the media reported on the incident, the Washington Post said.
"Israel will apprehend those who perpetrated the abominable murder… and will punish them to the fullest extent of the law," Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said in a statement.
Washington also denounced the attacks, as State Department spokesman Philip Reeker was quoted in the Post article as saying, "We strongly condemn the shooting attack in the strongest possible terms.
"Attacks such as these, which are intended to kill civilians, are unconscionable and barbaric," Reeker continued, urging Palestinians to show restraint and halt the cycle of violence.
But the killing is certain to further inflame passions that have been running at fever pitch over the last week as the bloodshed shows every sign of mounting.
"This attack could not have taken place without the prior political and security approval of Israel, which has protected the settlers from start to finish," Jibril Rajoub, head of Palestinian preventative security in the West Bank, told AFP.
"This attack is the outcome of the Israeli establishment's incitement against the Palestinian people. It proves the settlements in the occupied territories are a cancer that must be uprooted," he said.
Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, told AFP: "This will lead to a widespread response by the Palestinians. I'm afraid if [the settlers] are not stopped, we are on the verge of a bloodbath."
In the interest of halting the violence, a number of foreign ministers from the G8 (Group of Eight) nations have called for a body of international monitors to be established in the occupied territories to ascertain that both sides are doing all they can to fulfill the agreed upon steps of the Mitchell report, an internationally-backed plan aimed ending 10 months of violence and resuming peace talks.
Ahead of Friday's G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, Israel had rejected calls for international observers that Palestinians welcomed in hopes that a foreign observer presence would curtail the lethal force implemented by the Israeli army.
However, under pressure to accept, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said Friday that Israel might agree to U.S. Central Intelligence Agency personnel - but no one else.
"We are opposed to any observers, but if they were imposed on us, the presence of American observers would be acceptable," he initially told public radio.
"We could agree to this because the United States follows closely what is happening and knows how [Palestinian] terrorism is growing and that it must be fought," Ben Eliezer said, alluding to Palestinian attacks.
In a hastily released statement after the interview, Ben Eliezer clarified that "in an extreme situation he would accept the sending of members of the CIA," but that he still rejected "the presence of another international force".
The CIA was given the position of being in charge of implementing security measures after the 1998 Wye River accords, and Israeli officials say that there is no need to enlarge the "supervision mechanism" already in place in the CIA's presence there.
The G8 foreign ministers, meeting in Rome ahead of the summit, declared, "We believe that ... third party monitoring accepted by both parties would serve their interests in implementing the Mitchell report."
The Palestinians hailed the proposal, which has been the subject of a long-standing appeal to the international community.
"Sending an observer force to the Palestinian territories is the best way of rescuing the peace process," Arafat's top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
But Sharon and his Likud party's minister without portfolio, Danny Naveh, shot down the proposal, saying that the presence of foreign observers would hinder their fight against "terror attacks" and serve the Palestinian aim of internationalizing the conflict.
A total of 120 international observers - whose powers are virtually confined to making reports that are kept secret - have been deployed in Hebron since January 1997, after Israel sent troops into four-fifths of the area to protect some 400 Jewish settlers.
While Israeli officials say the present observers' presence interferes with military operations, the Palestinians complain they can do nothing to prevent severe harassment by settlers and Israeli repression.
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