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Settlers blamed Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_6922http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_6922
Middle East - AP
Israeli Settlers Blamed for Bombing
Wed Sep 18, 2:12 AM ET
By NASSER SHIYOUKHI, Associated Press Writer
HEBRON, West Bank (AP) - Israeli police and Palestinian officials in the West Bank said they believe extremist Jewish settlers planted two bombs in a Palestinian school yard Tuesday. One device exploded, injuring five children.
Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, spokesman for the Jewish Settlers' Council, said the bombing was an "immoral and illegal act."
Israeli military officials said the explosion occurred near a water cooler in the courtyard of the Ziff junction secondary school south of Hebron. The second bomb was found and safely detonated. The Israeli military controls the junction, a remote region populated mainly by Bedouins.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' office, meanwhile, said the government had rejected a Palestinian cease-fire proposal during a meeting at United Nations ( news - web sites) headquarters in New York.
The proposal by Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Shaath called for an end to Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians in a first phase and an end to all attacks in the second. Peres' office said the plan was unacceptable because it would allow attacks on those not classified as civilians during its first phase. That was taken to mean Jewish settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza.
Shaath said the cease-fire also calls for an Israeli commitment to stop killing suspected Palestinian militants and destroying houses. "If Israel will do that, then this will pave a way for a comprehensive cease-fire, but unfortunately Mr. Peres said that he rejects it," the Palestinian minister said.
In violence early Wednesday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian gunman and wounded a second when they opened fire on troops and tried to run them down with a car, the army said. The incident happened in the West Bank village of Tamoun, near Jenin.
Also Wednesday, the body of an Israeli was found in a grove in the Palestinian town of al-Azzaria in the West Bank, not far from the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim, Israeli police said. The Israeli had been reported missing Tuesday. Police blamed Palestinian militants.
In other developments Tuesday, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition by the families of two Palestinian suicide bombers to prevent the destruction of their homes by Israeli forces, Army Radio reported. The two bombers carried out a Dec. 1 attack in which 11 Israelis were killed. Relatives denied they knew of the suicide attackers' plans.
Shaath said instead of carrying out an agreement to turn Gaza security back to the Palestinians, Israel is targeting all of Gaza.
In August, Israel and the Palestinians reached agreement to return control of Gaza and the West Bank town of Bethlehem back to the Palestinians as a test case. Israel withdrew its troops from Bethlehem, but the Gaza part was not implemented, and each side blamed the other.
Israeli troops entered the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza earlier Tuesday and blew up metal workshops where the Israelis say Palestinians were making weapons, the latest in a series of almost nightly raids by Israeli forces in Gaza.
On Tuesday evening, Israeli forces destroyed a house in the Gaza-Egypt border, residents said. The area is the scene of frequent clashes, and Israeli forces often uncover tunnels there used for smuggling weapons into Gaza.
The school yard bomb went off just after recess ended at 9:45 a.m. A 6-year-old boy was among the five injured children.
On July 26, Palestinians killed an Israeli couple, their 9-year-old son and a soldier from Hebron in an ambush at the same junction.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said he held the Israeli government responsible for Tuesday's bombing. Israel "failed to bring any of those who kill Palestinians in cold blood to justice," he said.
Most of the violent incidents allegedly involving Jewish extremists have centered on the Hebron area. The most recent incident was July 28, when a Palestinian girl was shot and killed during the funeral of an Israeli soldier in the divided city. Settlers are suspected, and several were detained for questioning.
Hebron is divided in to Palestinian and Israeli-controlled zones, with Israeli soldiers patrolling the center of the city, where about 450 Jewish settlers, including some of the most militant in the West Bank, live in three enclaves and clash frequently with Palestinians.
On April 28, Israeli police foiled an attack by Jewish settlers when their car was stopped next to a Palestinian girls school on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. A huge bomb was found in a trailer the car was towing. Police said the settlers intended to set off the bomb as Palestinian girls arrived for school.
Four Israelis from Bat Ayin, a settlement north of Hebron, were arrested and remain in custody.
On July 19, 2001, gunmen ambushed a car on a road west of Hebron, killing three Palestinians, including an infant. A shadowy Jewish extremist group claimed responsibility. The gunmen apparently escaped into Israel, and no one has been charged in the ambush.
In March this year, a bomb went off in another Palestinian school in east Jerusalem, injuring a teacher and four children. Jewish militants claimed responsibility for that attack, but no one has been charged.
There have been several other incidents, most involving settlers taking revenge in West Bank villages after Palestinian terror attacks or funerals for Jewish victims.
However, of the 1,790 Palestinians who have been killed in the two-year conflict, Jewish extremists are suspected in only a few deaths. Since the conflict began, 609 people have been killed on the Israeli side.
Settlers have been prime targets of Palestinian attacks throughout the conflict, and experts have warned that a Jewish terror underground could form to carry out revenge attacks, reminiscent of a settler-dominated terror group in the mid-1980s that attacked Palestinian mayors and a Hebron university and planned to blow up Palestinian buses and the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's holiest site in Jerusalem.
In the West Bank, the military arrested the head of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Said Abu Al-Haija. He was captured Sunday after he was wounded in a gun battle. Disclosing the arrest on Tuesday, the Israeli military said he was responsible for a number of attacks against Israelis.
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