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More strikes to follow { October 8 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08CND-MIDE.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08CND-MIDE.html
October 8, 2002
Sharon Calls Gaza Strike a Success; Says More Will Follow
By JAMES BENNET
JERUSALEM, Oct. 8 — Defiant in the face of widespread criticism from abroad, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel today praised a Gaza Strip attack that killed at least 13 Palestinians as a success, and said similar operations would follow.
Mr. Sharon expressed sorrow at the civilian deaths caused after Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships were sent into the the densely packed town of Khan Yunis early Monday, but he brushed aside international condemnation.
"There is a need to be certain that terrorist organizations will not have the freedom to carry out intentional murder," Mr. Sharon told reporters today after a meeting with the Israeli president, Moshe Katsav.
"Most of the casualties there were terrorists and are terrorists, but still there were some civilians. Therefore I express my sorrow for that."
Mr. Sharon added: "The operation was a successful operation. This operation was complicated, it was a difficult operation. There will be more operations in Gaza."
The Bush administration, in an unusual rebuke, called on Israel after the raid to investigate the deaths and said it expected "immediate steps" to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
Today Mr. Sharon said he would scale back a visit to the United States next week because of the tense situation in the Middle East. He said he still intended to meet President Bush at the White House on Oct. 16 but would eliminate a planned stopover in New York City to talk with leading American Jews.
In renewed violence on the West Bank today, suspected Palestinian gunmen wounded four Israelis, all members of the same family traveling in their car, in an attack near the city of Hebron, Israeli security officials and medical workers told Reuters. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Several Jewish settlers in the divided city attacked Palestinian shopowners on news of the shooting, the agency said.
Monday's Israeli Army incursion into Khan Yunis with dozens of tanks backed by helicopter gunships was part of what the military called a new strategy to place the Islamist group Hamas on the defensive.
Most of the dead were victims of a single missile fired into a crowded dirt road, and Washington said Israel was endangering civilians.
The Arab League, based in Cairo, today condemned the strike as barbaric, and said it was surprised at the international inability "to reign in the Israeli violence which deprives the Palestinians of the right to live a dignified life."
The Israeli missile gashed the median strip of Gamal Abdel Nasser street in Khan Yunis and shattered windows three stories above it. Hours later, patches of the gold-colored sand were still crimson mud.
Salaam Abu Salaam, 12, rushed up to a stranger with a jagged piece of shrapnel. Asked why Israel had conducted the raid, he said, "They hate us."
In Washington, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said on Monday: "We're deeply troubled by the reports of Israeli actions in Gaza over the weekend that resulted in deaths and wounding of many Palestinian civilians. While the precise details still remain uncertain, Israeli operations were undertaken in crowded civilian areas and involved firing on a medical facility."
The Bush administration is trying to rally Arab and other international support for a possible war against Iraq. The apparent Israeli decision to widen its military offensive from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip seems certain to inflame anger across the Arab world.
Unlike other recent Israeli attacks, this one did not have the specific aim of killing wanted men or destroying weapons factories. Calling Khan Yunis a Hamas stronghold, the army said the mission was part of a new strategy of putting pressure on Hamas, which has often launched crude rockets from the Gaza Strip.
Although Israel has tracked down and killed Hamas leaders, it has generally responded to Hamas bombings of Israeli civilians with punitive attacks on Yasir Arafat's governing Palestinian Authority.
Brig. Gen. Yisrael Ziv, the commander of the army's Gaza division, called the Israeli mission "a very important operation that once again shows that there is no terror bastion that is safe from our troops."
More than 100 people were injured in the raid, which left some in critical condition with shrapnel wounds, Palestinian hospital officials said. The dead included a 14-year-old boy and a woman in her 40's, the officials said.
Israeli troops also fired machine guns and semiautomatic weapons toward Nasser Hospital here, where most of the wounded were taken. The army said its soldiers had fired in response to mortar shelling. At least three people were injured, and one was reported to have been killed.
Palestinian officials said all of the dead were civilians. The Israeli Army said most of them were armed men. Some Israeli officials expressed consternation over the action, saying they feared that it could embarrass President Bush on the day of his major speech on Iraq.
The aim of the Israeli government was to sabotage truce talks among Palestinians, the Palestinian officials said, by provoking Hamas, which promised bloody retaliation.
Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, said through a spokesman that firing into a crowd of civilians could have "no legal or moral justification."
He said the Israeli attack "could lead to a further escalation while increasing the sense of vulnerability and insecurity among both the Palestinians and Israelis."
Javier Solana, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, said he was shocked by the number of civilian casualties. He is visiting the region in an effort to restart negotiations to resolve the conflict and to encourage the Palestinian Authority to quell Palestinian violence.
But even before Monday's raid, Mr. Arafat was a rusting symbol of a collapsed peace effort in this dust-choked warren of cinder-block houses.
Groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad command fierce loyalty, and their flags waved over the coffins carried through the streets Monday as masked men fired bursts into the air and swore to avenge the deaths.
The Israeli Army said 25 armed Palestinians had attacked the Israeli forces as they withdrew, seeking to exploit the troops' most vulnerable moment. The helicopter fired at the armed men, the army said.
An army drone circling overhead photographed the missile strike, but the army said it was unlikely to release the images because they were intelligence material.
Palestinian witnesses said residents poured into the street after Israeli forces evacuated a position they had taken in a commanding, six-story building and appeared to have left the area.
Some witnesses said armed men in the crowd had fired into the air in celebration, though others said no shots had been fired. Suddenly, the witnesses said, the helicopter swung over the street.
Gadah al-Farah, 31, a school supervisor, said her son, Fauzi Farid al-Akad, 10, had followed his father out the door to search for identity cards that Israeli troops had taken when they occupied their apartment. She watched from the balcony, she said, as the missile struck among the throng.
"Why?" she asked, sitting beside her son, who lay in Nasser Hospital with a fractured right leg and light shrapnel wounds in both arms. "Why are they doing this to our children? What did my son do to them? Let my family live in peace."
Her husband, Farid Fawzi al-Akad, 41, a pharmacist, lay across the room, wounded in one arm and one leg.
Tension mounted between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority after the chief of the Palestinian riot police, Col. Rajeh Abu Lehiya, was kidnapped at a fake Palestinian checkpoint and then killed, his body riddled with bullets.
The killing appeared to be the work of a clan linked to Hamas, avenging the death of one of its members a year ago when the Palestinian police cracked down on demonstrators protesting the American war in Afghanistan.
The Palestinian Authority demanded that Hamas hand over those responsible for today's killing, and attempts to arrest some Hamas members led to clashes that left at least four Hamas militants dead.
On Monday evening, in a rare display of force, armed officers of the Palestinian Authority checked cars traveling along Gaza main roads, and dozens of officers, wielding wooden batons for riot control, were stationed at major intersections around Gaza City. Israeli officials complained that the Authority employed such security only when Palestinian lives, not Israeli lives, were at stake.
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