Israeli commandos killed an Islamic Jihad activist and injured another in the West Bank, while a Palestinian boy was also killed by Israeli gunfire during clashes in the Gaza Strip, said reports.
The unrest flared in the Occupied Territories as Israel continued to drag its heels over allowing international observers to monitor a CIA-brokered, so-called ceasefire.
A member of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Mustafa Yassin, 28, was suspected of having sent a Palestinian to carry out a suicide bomb attack in the northern Israeli city of Haifa Sunday, said Haaretz newspaper.
According to the paper, an elite Border Police undercover unit shot dead Monday the “third member of the terrorist cell that attempted to carry out a suicide bombing in Haifa on Sunday.”
Police arrested one member of the cell in Haifa on Sunday, but the two others managed to escape, said the paper, citing police sources.
The second member was arrested early Monday in the Haifa area, but the third, who drove the group's car to Haifa, fled into the West Bank, it added.
Earlier Monday, another member of Islamic Jihad, which has conducted numerous anti-Israeli attacks in recent years, was wounded in the leg when four masked men pulled alongside his car in Bethlehem and opened fire before fleeing, said AFP.
Palestinian security sources told AFP the shooting was an assassination bid by Israeli commandos. Israeli public radio reported it was a shoot-out between rival Palestinian militants.
Meanwhile, Rif’at Al Nahal, 15, was killed by Israeli machinegun fire in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, said AFP.
The Palestinians say around 40 activists have been killed in direct attacks by Israel since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising.
"Islamic clerics are brainwashing young Palestinians and telling them the lie that they will go straight to paradise if they commit suicide and murder Israelis," Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was quoted as saying by his office.
Peres, who said the clerics should commit suicide themselves, also accused Palestinian President Yasser Arafat of not doing enough to halt anti-Israeli violence, public radio reported.
However, the staff of international NGOs working in the Occupied Territories have repeatedly said that, in contrast with the assertions of Peres and Israeli spokespeople, Palestinian children take to the streets to protest out of a sense of duty and frustration, after 34 years of grinding Israeli military occupation.
Moreover, they say, only a minute percentage of Palestinian children regularly demonstrate, while many others have been shot dead in acts of daily living. Amnesty International early this spring estimated that Israeli soldiers had killed nearly 100 children in just a few months.
Israel, meanwhile, said it was waiting for further details from the United States before deciding whether to allow more CIA agents to oversee the would-be ceasefire with the Palestinians.
"Before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon makes a decision we have to discuss it in detail with the United States," a top Israeli official who asked not to be identified told AFP.
Israel believes an international force would in effect serve as a shield that would allow Palestinian militants to carry out anti-Israeli attacks.
"We were never against the idea that the CIA bring other monitors to help their work, but we are against an international force," Peres said Sunday.
The CIA attends Israeli-Palestinian security meetings and already has an unknown number of agents in the region overseeing the June 13 ceasefire negotiated by CIA chief George Tenet, which has failed to put a stop to the violence.
The idea of sending more US intelligence agents instead of an international observers gained ground Monday, with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana saying that "the important thing is to have an international presence on the ground," and that it was "not a question of nationality."
"If the Americans have the trust of both sides they are welcome," he said in Beirut.
Earlier, the touring EU official met in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who called for the EU to play a greater role in the Middle East.
In the Saudi city of Jeddah, Arafat met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdelaziz, and won backing from the Saudis for an emergency Arab summit on the Middle East crisis, said the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
On Monday night, no incidents were reported during the closing ceremony of the Maccabiah Games or so-called Jewish Olympics, despite fears of a possible Palestinian attack.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon noted in a speech that the 16th Maccabiah Games were held for the first time in Jerusalem, "which will forever be the reunified and indivisible capital of the state of Israel," according to Haaretz.
Israeli police were on high alert all day as they said they had been receiving warnings of attempted bombings and other violence that could mar the last night of the games.
Israel last week bombarded a house in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where it said militants from the Hamas movement were planning an attack on the games' closing night.
In further unrest Monday, Palestinian sources said a five-year-old Palestinian girl was in critical condition after she and a four-year-old boy were injured by Israeli shooting near the West Bank town of Ramallah, said AFP.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper the Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
