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Israel Ambushes Palestinian Security Team
GAZA CITY, April 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinians pressed the United States Thursday to take "harsh" action against Israel for shooting on an official convoy returning from top-level security talks between Palestinians and Israelis with a U.S. representative present from the CIA, in what they called a premeditated ambush.
Israel admitted firing on the convoy containing Palestinian security chiefs but said it was responding to fire from one of the escorting vehicles on an army post.
Mohammed Dahlan, one of the three security chiefs, said Israel tried to assassinate him and his colleagues with heavy machine gun fire. Seven bullets struck his silver Mercedes; and a bag with personal belongings resting near his feet in the car was also hit, reports MSNBC.
"I can say for sure that the shooting was pre-planned, maybe not by the top official [in Israel], but there is no doubt that the responsibility lies with senior officers in the Israeli army who have no intention of reaching an agreement to calm the situation," Palestinian intelligence chief Amin al-Hindi told Voice of Palestine radio.
He said the Israelis had fired heavily on the convoy just after it entered the Gaza Strip Wednesday night through the Erez crossing with Israel, following a meeting of security chiefs aimed at quelling months of deadly unrest.
"It was a pre-planned ambush," said Hindi, who was in the convoy with the head of preventative security in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Dahlan, and Gaza general security leader Abdel Razeq al-Majeida.
Dahlan said three of his bodyguards were hurt, including one who was shot in the leg and two who suffered broken limbs when one of the four cars overturned, MSNBC adds.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's top adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina also slammed the attack. "We demand the American administration take harsh measures against Israel to stop its attacks," he told AFP.
"It was apparently a provocation by the Palestinians following the failure of the meeting with Israeli security officials," an Israeli army spokesman said.
The Israeli army said in a statement that the head of its southern command, General Doron Almog, suggested the creation of a joint Israeli-Palestinian forum to investigate the incident.
The meeting of security chiefs was the first since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took office a month ago and followed a fierce upsurge in violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
In a related incident, a leader of the Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad was blown up in a telephone booth blast in the West Bank on Thursday in what the Palestinians labeled another "assassination" by Israel.
The West Bank blast killed Iyad Hardan, 30, a top member of the Islamic Jihad movement, as he made a call from a pay phone outside the Palestinian prison where he was being held in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, adding that the telephone had probably been booby-trapped, reports the Washington Post.
An Israeli cabinet minister said the killing of the leading Islamic Jihad member would hamper the activities of the Palestinian movement.
"I think it will set them back in a meaningful way," Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh told Israeli military radio, refusing to comment on whether Israel carried out the killing.
Witnesses told military radio that Hardan's body was thrown several meters (yards) by the blast and reported seeing a pilot-less aircraft in the sky at the time, raising suspicions it had emitted the signal triggering the explosion.
Hardan, who the radio said was wanted by Israel for the last eight years, was the second Islamic Jihad activist to be slain in four days following warnings by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government that it would go on the offensive against those its suspects of "terrorism".
Palestinian officials have accused Israel of assassinating at least 20 activists since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in September, MSNBC concludes.
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