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Israeli Troops Shoot Dead Four Palestinians
NABLUS, West Bank, Aug 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians in the West Bank on Wednesday as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insisted there would be no moves on an internationally backed peace plan until Palestinian attacks were halted.
The killings came just hours after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres agreed to hold talks on ending the bloodshed that has left more than 730 people dead since September, the vast majority of whom are Palestinians.
Military sources said on Israeli radio that the four Palestinians were shot in clashes that erupted when an elite Israeli unit surprised a group of Palestinian activists about to plant a bomb close to a Jewish settlement.
The Israeli daily Ha'aretz quoted the reports, adding that the Israeli army said the activists were members of a Palestinian "cell" and the soldiers opened fire when the Palestinians tried to plant the explosive in the road, killing five of them.
But Mahmud el-Alul, the governor of Palestinian-run Nablus, told Palestinian radio that four Palestinians were shot and killed after three men tried to rescue a Palestinian who had been wounded overnight by Israelis near Beit Ila.
A BBC online report said that the fifth killing claimed by the Israeli army had not yet been confirmed, and that another four Palestinians were wounded in the attack.
The bullet-riddled bodies of 22-year-old Hakkam Tayeh, 25-year-old Faadi Samaana and Zaher Ismail, 30, were found near Nablus early Wednesday morning.
The Israelis took the body of the fourth victim, 23-year-old Ahed Fares, an official from Arafat's Fatah movement said.
According to the Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite channel, the Israeli occupation army fired at ambulances trying to remove the bodies.
Israeli soldiers have assassinated more than 40 Palestinian resistance activists, although it terms the killings by such euphemisms as "targeted killings," "liquidations," "surgical strikes," "pre-emptive strikes" and "interception operations". Such assassinations by Israel have been condemned by the international community and criticized by the U.S., Israel's staunchest ally.
Around 10,000 people gathered in Nablus for the funerals of the four Palestinian men, protesting Israeli occupation and aggression.
"The Israelis must understand we don't want settlements," a Fatah member shouted through a loudspeaker.
One of the main Palestinian demands in the uprising, or Intifada, has been the withdrawal of scores of Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory. The settlements are illegal under international law, but Sharon and previous Israeli leaders have refused to either remove them or halt their continued growth.
Also on Wednesday, Israeli troops fired two anti-tank missiles at a Palestinian police station near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, destroying the building and injuring seven policemen, Palestinian security officials said.
Palestinian officials said the attack came without warning or provocation. It was the third such attack in a week on Palestinian security positions in the area.
Meanwhile, Sharon reiterated his opposition to implementing the internationally backed Mitchell peace plan until the raging violence halts entirely for a week.
"We have not given up on this test period of seven days, which was agreed with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell," Sharon said after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who is on a three-day mission to revive the moribund peace process.
On Tuesday, Fischer engineered a meeting between Peres and Arafat to discuss a phased ceasefire, although no date was set for the talks.
Switzerland offered to host the meeting, a Swiss government spokesman said, although Arafat said the meeting could occur in Berlin.
Sharon has insisted that the Mitchell peace plan, seen by the international community as a roadmap to end the 11-month conflict, cannot be implemented until all violence has halted.
Fischer said the plan - which calls for a truce, a six-week cooling-off period, a freeze on Jewish settlements as a confidence-building measure and an eventual return to peace talks - should be carried out to clear the way for the peace process.
Arafat was in Cairo Wednesday at an Arab foreign ministers meeting to discuss a unified Arab position supporting the Palestinians.
The ministers were to discuss the "continued Israeli aggression against sacred Islamic and Christian sites, as well as the recent aggression in Jerusalem, Orient House and several other Palestinian institutions," the Arab League said in a statement.
Israeli forces stormed and occupied Orient House - the unofficial Palestinian headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem - earlier this month, allegedly as part of a series of reprisals for an August 9th bombing in Jerusalem.
Arafat was to travel to Pakistan and China on Thursday to drum up support after Israel and the United States objected to Palestinian demands for the deployment of international monitors to the region during a U.N. Security Council debate that commenced Monday.
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