Nearly one year ago, remember?
"Israeli Shells Kill 18; Hamas Calls for Retaliation" by IAN FISHER and STEVEN ERLANGER
BEIT HANUN, Gaza, Nov. 8 — Israeli tank shells killed 18 Palestinians, including 8 children and 6 women, at a cluster of houses here today, igniting a fury that threatened a steep escalation in violence, with a Hamas leader calling for retaliation against Israel.
“Nothing happened,” mumbled 5-year-old Isra Athamnah, pocked with shrapnel wounds and in shock. The news that her widowed mother, Sanaa, 35, was dead, and she was now an orphan, did not sink in.
Others described how a tank shell hit a home in this northern Gaza town, sending scores of sleeping members of the extended Athamnah family outside before dawn. The next volleys struck them as they crowded in a narrow alley between the houses, dismembering several among the dead, whose ages ranged from less than a year to 70, witnesses said.
“What can I tell you about Maisa now?” cried out an elderly woman, apparently referring to a dead granddaughter. “All I could see was parts of bodies — a head here, brains on the other side.”
In response to one of the largest single losses of life here in years, several top Hamas leaders called for renewed suicide bombings inside Israel, after largely observing a unilateral truce it declared a year and a half ago. Khaled Meshal, leader of Hamas’s political bureau and exiled in Syria, said Hamas would answer the deaths with “deeds, not words.”
In a statement, Mr. Meshal said: “All Palestinian groups are urged to activate resistance despite the difficult situation on the ground. Our confidence in our military wing to respond is great.”
Hamas’s military wing also said in a statement that the United States should be taught “hard lessons” for supporting Israel. The threat, if vague, marked an unusual escalation for Hamas, an Islamic-based militant group that has pointedly portrayed its fight as being against Israel alone. It was immediately disavowed by Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-led government in Gaza.
The Israelis had just pulled out of Beit Hanun on Tuesday morning after a six-day operation in which they occupied the town and fought battles with militants, many of them from Hamas. Killed were at least 52 Palestinians, including 22 believed to be civilians, and one Israeli soldier. Israel said the operation was aimed at stopping Palestinian rocket fire into nearby Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon. Nonetheless, 13 rockets were fired into Israel today, according to the army.
Israeli leaders, already on the defensive over the war against Hezbollah and the more than 300 Palestinians killed in operations in Gaza since the summer, issued immediate statements of regret. Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered a halt to artillery attacks in the densely populated Gaza strip and an immediate investigation into the incident.
The military said it had launched “preventative” artillery shelling near the area, in response to some 10 Qassam rockets fired in the previous 24 hours. The Israeli notion is that shelling open areas will deter Palestinian militants from firing rockets from there, even though the deterrence is not clear and the shells are not uniformly accurate. In this case, the military said in a statement, initial reports showed rounds landing “at a location distant from the one reportedly hit.”
Both Israeli political and military leaders laid the blame for any deaths on the Palestinian fighters who launch the rockets from civilian areas, then hide among civilians.
This is not the first time that such Israeli shelling has gone awry, hitting houses in Beit Hanun and nearby Beit Lahiya, and killing or wounding those inside or nearby and emboldening extremists on all sides. And it is not the first time that errant rounds have led to a halt or delay in efforts to find new paths of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians, and among the Palestinian factions themselves.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, both of whom gave blood for the victims and visited them in hospitals, have been engaged in two days of negotiations on a new Palestinian government to replace the one run by Hamas and isolated internationally. The intention is to have a government of “national unity” made up of experts and technocrats approved by the varying parties, in the hope that Western aid and Palestinian tax money will again begin to flow to a Palestinian Authority that has been unable to pay full salaries for nine months.
The idea was also to have the new government release an Israeli soldier captured on June 25, which would prompt an Israeli release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and a long-delayed meeting between Mr. Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.
But this latest shelling, on top of the Beit Hanun operation that both Mr. Abbas and Mr. Haniya already called a “massacre,” has caused them to cancel their negotiations for at least the next three days of official mourning called today in the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Haniya reportedly demanded the pause; Mr. Abbas conceded.
If Hamas follows through on these calls to resume suicide bombings inside Israel, the whole plan may once again collapse, leaving Israel and the Palestinians in a condition of further violent confrontation with no clear political path.
In June, a similar cycle of violence followed another apparently errant Israeli shelling that killed Palestinian civilians, including seven members of a single family — the Ghaliyas — enjoying a day at the beach. The Israelis said they were shelling areas where rocket teams had fired into Israel, and they denied having fired the shell that killed the family.
But no Palestinian believed the Israeli denial, and there was never any conclusive alternative explanation. The Ghaliyas came to be viewed as martyrs, and the military wing of Hamas announced that it was ending the cease-fire against Israel. The Hamas government belatedly went along, and Hamas resumed firing rockets toward Israel, instead of simply supplying them to others.
More important, the Hamas military wing participated in the capture of the Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, later in June, precipitating the current political crisis that surrounded and has outlasted Israel’s summer war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Only three days before that operation, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert met informally in Petra, Jordan, and promised to have a summit within two weeks, setting a date for June 28. Mr. Olmert promised Mr. Abbas to release 600 prisoners then. But three days before the scheduled meeting, Corporal Shalit was captured, and the Hamas government found itself unable to repudiate the actions of its own military wing, apparently directed by Mr. Meshal.
Hamas later said it would reinstate the truce with Israel, but may now break it again, and more decisively, since its experiment in government appears to be foundering.
Israeli officials repeated their standard explanations of why they shell to try to stop the Qassams into Israel. “Israel is faced with constant attack by the Palestinian terror organizations, in the form of relentless firing of Qassam rockets at Israeli population centers,” said Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign affairs minister. “Israel has no desire to harm innocent people, but only to defend its citizens.”
The army used the same explanation for its operation in Beit Hanun, its largest in Gaza since July. Army officials, which regularly conduct such operations in the West Bank, call it “cutting the grass,” challenging militants to fight, arresting others and interrogating them. In Beit Hanun, the army said, it arrested at least 30 Palestinians and brought them back into Israel for extensive interrogations.
Residents complained that the damage by Israeli troops was particularly severe, at least 30 houses destroyed and roads, trees and water mains ripped up.
Among the Palestinian dead were at least two women on their way to a mosque in response to a call from Hamas on the radio to help dozens of its fighters holed up there. Hundreds of women responded and many of the men escaped in women’s clothing; the dead women were also declared martyrs.
Between the deaths and the destruction, Palestinians and their leaders were already primed in an anger against Israel — and increasingly at the United States — that erupted on Tuesday: Demonstrations were held around Gaza and the West Bank.
Calling it a “black day,” Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, announced three days of mourning and condemned Israeli attacks that he said were disproportionately harsh to the damage caused by the Palestinian rockets, which he said he also opposed.
“I don’t believe in the rockets but their reactions cannot be justified,” he told reporters in Gaza. “We totally condemn the international silence and any acts that can be used as justification for their Israeli massacres.”
World leaders, including those from the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, Britain and Italy, condemned the incident. “It is hard to see what this action was meant to achieve and how it can be justified,” said the British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, called for restraint by all parties. “We deeply regret the injuries and loss of life in Gaza today,” Mr. Johndroe said. “We have seen the Israeli government’s apology and hope their investigation will be completed quickly.”
Leaders of Hamas, which has headed the Palestinian government since March, reacted with fury. “After this barbaric operation, Israel proved that it is not a humane state,” said Mr. Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas government. “It’s a state that believes in killing, and therefore this state should cease to exist.”
But the divisions between Hamas in the territories and Mr. Meshal abroad were readily apparent. The statement of the group’s military wing, which blamed the United States for its “logistical, material and political cover for the Zionist occupation crimes” and called for Muslims “to teach the Americans hard lessons,” was specifically disavowed by local Hamas politicians.
Mr. Hamad and other Hamas leaders contended that the group was not advocating attacks on America, its citizens or interests. “For sure not,” said Salah Bardawil, a Hamas member of parliament. “We emphasize that there is no change in our strategy. There is not even any consideration of change. What is meant here is a political boycott of the Americans.”
Witnesses said the shelling began about 5:30 a.m., at a cluster of houses belonging to three brothers, one of whom died about a year ago, and dozens of extended family members. Ali Athamnah, 29, a doctor, said he heard the crash of a shell, then glass from the window spattered on his face. He looked down from his second-story balcony and saw one relative, Ahmad, wounded and scores of other family members running outside.
Then the other shells hit, and he did not see the crowd standing anymore. “They just left — they withdrew,” he said, walking over puddles filled with blood, spattered human remains and sandals, many belonging to children. “They were gone.” Others were reported killed while sleeping in the half-dozen other houses struck.
“Children! Women! Parents!” said Abu Ahman, 42, a rescue worker who lives on the street and arrived right after the rockets hit. “I can’t find the words that describe this action. Legs of children. Head of a small girl. Pieces of intestine.”
At the Kamal Edwan hospital, Maali Athamnah, 27, the aunt of the newly orphaned Isra and two other siblings who survived, Islam, 14, and Muhammad, 3, who broke both his legs, broke into tears reading a list of the dead — nearly all of them relatives. In addition, 80 people were wounded.
“What did they do?” she wailed. “They were sleeping in their beds. They didn’t fire rockets.”
She said she did not support the militants firing rockets into Israel. But she said: “Just think who is firing them. Those who lost family members to Israel. And think about these kids now. They will be the rocket firers in the future. No mother, no father. No house. They will be the next ones to fire the rockets.”
In the occupied West Bank today, Israeli soldiers killed four gunmen and a civilian during a raid near the city of Jenin, Palestinian security officials said. Israeli forces also killed a Hamas gunman and a 17-year-old civilian near Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp, hospital officials said. The Israeli army said soldiers had shot three gunmen after being attacked with an anti-tank missile.
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"Palestinians Angrily Mourn 18 Civilians Killed by Israel" by IAN FISHER
BEIT HANUN, Gaza, Nov. 9 — Palestinians marched in anger and mourning on Thursday for 18 civilians killed by Israeli artillery — baring for cameras the battered faces of two dead children. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel offered to ease tensions by meeting the Palestinian president “anytime, anyplace.”
“I am very uncomfortable with this event,” Mr. Olmert said at a business conference in Tel Aviv. “I’m very distressed.”
Saying that he had personally investigated the artillery strike, which spurred Hamas to warn that it might resume suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, Mr. Olmert called the shelling Wednesday a “mistake” caused by technical failure. And he urged Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to meet with him immediately.
“He will be surprised when he will sit with me of how far we are prepared to go,” he said. “I can offer him a lot.”
He did not explain what he meant. But his words seemed to reflect deep embarrassment at the deaths, mostly of women and children. The strike was condemned around the world, but also by many Israelis who are concerned about the number of civilians killed in Israeli operations to curb rocket fire by Palestinian militants into Israel.
Mr. Olmert’s statement also seemed to reposition the deaths — the largest single loss of life among Palestinians in years — into the realm of politics.
Any discussion between the men would invariably center on the difficult question of prisoners. It is unclear, however, how far Mr. Olmert could move from his past insistence that an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants in June must be released before he would free hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails.
Mr. Abbas did not immediately respond to Mr. Olmert’s offer. But he has refused other such open-ended offers, saying that he wanted a concrete deal first on the prisoners and a meeting of “substance.”
On Thursday evening, the Israeli military issued its first detailed explanation of what went wrong with the shelling, saying an aiming radar had malfunctioned, causing the rounds to hit a cluster of civilians’ houses.
Maj. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, said that a first volley of 13 shells had been aimed at an orange grove concealing rocket launchers and landed just under a mile away from the houses. A second barrage of 11 rounds, she said, was “aimed 400 meters away from where they hit.”
“What we know from aerial photos is that two houses were hit directly,” she said. “Our estimate is that 5 or 6 shells of the 11 hit two houses.”
She added that, as is standard practice, the system was tested on targets before being used and that it had functioned properly.
Thousands of Palestinians, waving banners and shooting guns, returned to the shrapnel-scarred houses on Thursday with the bodies of the victims, carried on stretchers and wrapped in the yellow flags of the Fatah Party, led for decades by Yasir Arafat and now by Mr. Abbas. Women wailed and screamed for revenge: “Martyrs by the millions!” they chanted. “We are going to Jerusalem!”
Many of the dead were completely covered. But family members exposed the faces of two toddlers, the youngest victims — sisters named Maisa and Maram Athamnah, — as they held their bodies over their heads for the crowd and cameras to see.
“How was this baby guilty?” asked Kamal Hamdan, 43, after one of the bodies was paraded past him.
The bodies were carried to a new cemetery and buried in a single row, the two girls in the same concrete tomb as their mother, Manal, 25. The mood was furious, with many people saying they believed that Palestinians should intensify their attacks on Israel, civilians included.
“We must continue our resistance, even if the price is as big as this,” said Ataa Zania, a paramedic who helped evacuate the dead and wounded on Wednesday. “Whoever wants to liberate his country has to pay the price.”
As such, there was much approval for statements from Hamas leaders that they might resume suicide bombings inside Israel.
Several political analysts and experts on Hamas said they did not expect the group to resume a large-scale campaign of suicide attacks. Hamas, they contend, undertook a major shift in direction from militant group to political leadership when it won the Palestinian elections in January, and it stands to risk that by resuming a suicide campaign.
The group seems to remain deeply engaged in politics. On Thursday, the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, met again with Mr. Abbas here in Gaza in talks on a government of national unity, in which the Hamas cabinet would step down in favor of professionals and technocrats. The talks, however, are moving slowly, with many complications and little apparent hope of a deal in the next few days.
But several experts said they did not rule out one large attack by Hamas in specific retaliation against the deaths here.
“As in physics, every action has a reaction,” said Mustafah Sawwaf, a journalist and political analyst. “Now there is a lot of pressure” from Palestinians not just on Hamas, but other factions, to retaliate.
But Abu Obaida, a Hamas military spokesman, took pains to clarify a statement that the group’s military wing issued the day before warning of “hard lessons” in store for the United States, as Israel’s ally. He strongly denied that Hamas was calling for violence against Americans or their interests.
The “only theater of operations is Palestine, its only target is the Israeli occupation,” he said. “We have no intention of targeting any other nation or extending our theater of operation beyond the current one at this time.
“Of course,” he added, “this does not clear the United States of its moral obligation to try and be even-handed and objective instead of its bias toward Israel.”
