http://www.metronews.ca/reuters_international.asp?id=56113
Shooting Death, Mortar Attack Rattle Mideast Truce
Monday, February 14, 2005 8:49:01 AM ET
By Haitham Tamimi
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead a knife-wielding Palestinian in the West Bank and Palestinian militants fired a mortar round in Gaza on Monday, rattling a de facto cease-fire crucial to hopes of peacemaking.
Although the incidents appeared unrelated, they underlined persistent hair-trigger tension on the ground that leaders of both sides want to defuse with goodwill gestures after mutual cease-fire declarations at a Feb. 8 summit.
Palestinian militants have agreed only to a tacit truce but, after flouting the summit accord with a mortar barrage last week, promised no further attacks without consulting President Mahmoud Abbas.
Monday's killing in the West Bank city of Hebron will be the first test of that pledge.
The Israeli army said a Palestinian with a knife approached soldiers on patrol near Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims.
"He tried to stab a soldier and he was shot in self-defense. The attacker is dead," a military spokesman said.
Israeli medics tended to the Palestinian as he lay on the ground with a bullet wound to his chest. Two knives lay next to him. Israel Radio said he carried no identification, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
In Gaza, a mortar bomb launched by militants struck a military post, causing no injuries, the army said.
The attack broke the calm prevailing since Thursday when militants rained mortar fire on Jewish settlements, causing damage but no casualties, in reprisal for the killing of a Palestinian the day before by soldiers guarding a settlement.
A furious Abbas responded by sacking nine security force commanders, whom he had charged with ensuring quiet in Gaza after his Jan. 9 election, and wringing a pledge from militants to check with him before any further attacks on Israelis.
ISRAEL HANDS OVER BODIES OF MILITANTS
Despite Monday's violence, Israel carried out a promised gesture likely to bolster Abbas's standing among militants by handing over the remains of 15 comrades killed in fighting.
Hundreds of people including relatives of the dead and militant activists mobbed 15 flower-bedecked ambulances to which the bodies were transferred at a Gaza border crossing for transport to a public memorial service in Gaza City.
Many chanted "God is greatest" and "we give our blood and our souls for the martyrs." Cars honked horns in celebration.
Critical to Abbas's chances of gaining decisive leverage over powerful militant groups will be prisoner releases and military pullbacks by Israel now in the pipeline after his groundbreaking summit with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials were to meet on Monday night for security coordination talks expected to focus on army pullbacks from five West Bank cities.
Palestinian national security force chief Haj Ismail said the pullback was expected to begin with Jericho on Tuesday.
Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 500 prisoners and officials said they could go free as early as Wednesday. Another 400 prisoners are slated for release. Abbas has demanded many more of the 8,000 prisoners be freed.
Abbas told The New York Times in an interview a "new era" had dawned after four years of bloodshed and Sharon was speaking "a new language" with his gestures and plan to evacuate Gaza and a bit of the West Bank this summer.
The planned pullout was "a good sign to start with" on the road to peace "and now he (Sharon) has a partner," said Abbas, elected to succeed the late Yasser Arafat and revive a U.S.-devised road map to a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The two sides remain poles apart over the desired outcome, with Israel ruling out Palestinian demands for total withdrawal from the West Bank, handover of East Jerusalem for their capital and a state with full sovereignty sooner rather than much later.
(additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Mohammed Assadi in West Bank)
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