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Israelis Admit Error As Pressure For Greater U.S. Role
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pressure continued on the United States Wednesday to take a more active role in the Middle East, as the conflict escalated, with Israeli occupation troops admitting they committed an error in killing five Palestinian policemen in the West Bank Monday.
Israel voiced regret over the army's killing of the policemen in the West Bank this week, with a senior official saying it was an error, but those words failed to placate irate Palestinians.
"The death of the five policemen was an error caused by bad information given to soldiers who took part in the operation," an Israeli army official said on condition of anonymity.
The five Palestinian men were killed early Monday at their post in Beitunia near the West Bank town of Ramallah, in an attack the Palestinians branded a "dirty assassination."
For his part, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters: "The killing of the five Palestinian policemen, I regret it very much.
"If it is a mistake, I am sure it wasn't done by intention. War has its terrible costs and its mistakes," he said, adding that it would investigated by the army.
During an address to parliament's defense and foreign affairs committee Tuesday, Israel's army chief of staff General Shaul Mofaz called for a commission of inquiry into the killing, which had also been severely criticized in the Israeli media.
"There is a need to investigate the incident and, if in the end it appears that an error was made, we will not be ashamed to admit our mistake," Mofaz told the committee, according to Israel media.
The five - Ahmad Zakut, 27, Salah Ahmad Abu Amraa, 32, Mohammad al-Khaldi, 18, Mohammad Abu Dawood, 20 and Ahmad Abu Mustafa, 20 - were killed at their corrugated iron police post.
Ahmad al-Najjar, the sole survivor, said he was asleep when the shooting started, while some of his colleagues were having dinner.
"[One] was shot as he left through the backdoor to see what was happening, while I managed to hide in a hole nearby," he told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Palestinian police captain Hazim Abu Shamlah said the five were killed by sniper fire from a nearby building occupied by the army a month ago and a military post.
An Israeli settler woman was killed in a West Bank attack claimed by a group close to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction to avenge the deaths of the five policemen.
"The soldiers thought they were attacking a position used by members of Force 17 or another security service, which for the past two weeks was shooting daily against an army camp and a strategic road nearby," the Israeli official said, referring to Arafat's elite guard.
"The soldiers did not know that the members of Force 17 had been replaced by policemen, who were not involved in terrorist activities," the official added.
Arafat described the killing as a "dirty operation" and warned that Israel would pay a heavy price for the crime.
"We are not experimental elements for the Israeli army," Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters.
"They did not regret the so-called mistake. It was planned. The orders were made by Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and his chief of staff general Mofaz. Both are responsible for the killings, and we will consider them killers of civilians and policemen and will not accept any excuse," he added.
Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organization representative in Washington on Wednesday said Arafat would meet Powell in around ten days, probably in Paris.
The representative, Hassan Abdel Rahman, who spoke on Voice of Palestine radio, also said that Palestinian number two, Mahmud Abbas, who met with Powell in Washington, had urged the United States "to play a more active role in the [so-called] peace process."
Abbas is the highest-ranking Palestinian official to visit Washington since U.S. President George W. Bush took office on January 20th.
Pressure also came from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In remarks published Wednesday, he said that the stability of the Middle East would be in danger if the United States fails to act to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Without active American intervention, the situation will deteriorate further, threatening the region's stability and security," Mubarak said in an interview with the weekly Al-Musawwar magazine.
Mubarak complained that changes proposed by Israel to an Egyptian-Jordanian initiative to calm the situation were aimed at "suffocating and aborting" the drive launched last month to resume peace negotiations.
The joint initiative, drawn up by the only two Arab countries to have officially made peace with Israel, calls for an end to the violence and a halt to all building of Jewish settlements by Israel on occupied Palestinian land. It has garnered support from European countries and numerous other states as well as the Palestinians, but Israel has voiced objections.
Meanwhile in the territories, a Palestinian boy was killed Wednesday as the Israeli army mounted raids in the Gaza Strip as mourners from both sides buried those killed Tuesday on the anniversary of al-Nakba.
Mohammed Selim, 14, was shot and killed when he and other youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers from an orange grove near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip.
A Palestinian woman was also seriously wounded and her little daughter hurt when Israeli tanks shelled a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical and security sources said.
Israeli forces also hit another home and a Palestinian security post, causing damage but no injuries, the sources added.
Moreover, Israeli troops seized a dairy plant in Palestinian territory near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday and staged a four-hour arms search of Palestinian homes, a senior Palestinian security official said.
The plant is near a Jewish settlement that Israel said had been hit earlier by a Palestinian mortar shell.
Colonel Khaled Abu al-Ola, the Palestinian security official, said Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian workers when they seized the plant around 0500 GMT, but nobody was hurt.
Run by Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the plant is the biggest of its kind in the Gaza Strip, pasteurizing milk and producing yogurt, butter, cheese and other dairy products.
Palestinian officials strongly protested the occupation of the plant and ordered the troops to leave, but to no avail, Abu al-Ola said.
Before dawn, Israeli troops also launched more than four hours of searches of homes in Palestinian-ruled areas between Khan Yunis and Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, but have since withdrawn without finding any weapons, he added.
It is the seventh incursion into the Gaza Strip since last Thursday, according to the Palestinians, in contravention of the autonomy accords.
The latest incidents follow one of the deadliest days in the territories in weeks, when thousands of people protested across the Palestinian territories Tuesday for Al-Nakba, or the "catastrophe", recalling the hundreds of thousands who lost their homes and were displaced when Israel was created on Arab land in 1948.
During the protests, four Palestinians were killed, including a Hamas bodyguard, and at least 300 others were injured in Israeli attacks and confrontations in the occupied territories.
The BBC said Israeli troops used live fire against unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
In a recorded speech, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat demanded the right to independence for his people. He said the Palestinians rejected the "black destiny of exile and occupation," and warned that Israel's policy of "blockades and aggression could never give it security".
Arafat added the hour had come for the international community "to wake up to the injustice" suffered by the Palestinian people and tell Israel to stop its "aggression".
On September 28, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon transgressed upon the Muslim Haram Al Sharif, accompanied by over 1,000 Israeli occupation troops. Palestinians, as well as the entire Muslim and Arab world, saw it as highly provocative.
On the following day, in the same place, a large number of unarmed Palestinians demonstrated against Sharon's provocative act, beginning what has become known as the "Al-Aqsa Intifada".
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