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Israeli raid strains truce Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8182756http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8182756
Israeli Soldiers Kill Militant, Straining Truce
Thu Apr 14, 2005 10:41 AM ET
By Atef Sa'ad
NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian gunman in a raid in a West Bank refugee camp on Thursday, triggering militant threats to abandon an already-frayed truce.
The killing aggravated tensions in the region following a Texas summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush intended to provide impetus for Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer.
The circumstances of the shooting in Balata camp, a militant stronghold near the West Bank city of Nablus, were in dispute.
The Israeli army said soldiers had tried to arrest a wanted man suspected of plotting suicide attacks in Israel on orders from the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah. It said troops shot him only after he opened fire on them.
Palestinians said Israeli undercover troops jumped from a car and started shooting without provocation, hitting the militant in an ensuing gunbattle. Soldiers took him to an Israeli hospital, where he died of his wounds.
The dead man was identified as Ibrahim Isneiri, a member of al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah faction.
Hamas, the strongest Palestinian militant group, threatened to rethink its commitment to the shaky de facto truce.
"All parties concerned should intervene to stop Israeli aggression," Hamas official Ismail Haniyah said. "Otherwise the factions will seriously reconsider the understandings."
Abbas, a moderate elected in January to succeed the late Yasser Arafat, condemned the killing as a "serious violation" of the ceasefire deal he reached with Sharon at a Feb. 8 summit.
But Israeli officials said the raid was justified because the army had reserved the right to continue going after "ticking bombs" -- militants planning imminent attacks.
"If he had succeeded in carrying out attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, this could have disrupted the agreements," an Israeli army officer said. "This is why we took action."
FRAYED TRUCE
It was Israel's first killing of a militant in more than a month and followed Sharon's accusations that Abbas was not doing enough to rein in militants as he had promised.
Militants had agreed with Abbas in March to extend their suspension of attacks on Israelis. But the truce has frayed.
Israeli troops killed three Palestinian youths in disputed circumstances in Gaza on Saturday and militants retaliated by raining mortar fire on Jewish settlements in the coastal strip.
The last Palestinian attack inside Israel was a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv on Feb. 25.
Sharon has billed his Gaza pullout plan as a way to begin "disengaging" from conflict with the Palestinians. His blueprint calls for removing all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank starting in July.
On Thursday, Gaza settlers appealed to be allowed to keep their communities together if they are evacuated, the strongest suggestion yet that threatened resistance might fail.
A settler leader said if they had to go, they would favor a move to Nitzanim, about 20 km (13 miles) north of the Gaza Strip in a similar landscape of coastal sand dunes.
Polls show that most Israelis favor withdrawing the 8,500 settlers from Gaza. But many settlers see the land captured in the 1967 Middle East war as a biblical birthright and say withdrawal would "reward Palestinian terrorism."
Concern is strong in Israel that a hard core of settlers may use violence to prevent evacuation.
It would be the first time Israel removed settlements from land that Palestinians want for a state. But many Palestinians suspect the Gaza plan is a ruse to deprive them of much of the West Bank, where the vast majority of settlers live.
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