Troops Kill 4 Palestinians in West Bank Raid

Israeli soldiers shot and killed at least four Palestinians in a pre-dawn raid on the hilltop village of Nahhalin on Thursday in the worst single clash of the Arab uprising this year.

The incident highlighted the contrast between the almost daily violence inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the slow pace of peace moves in foreign capitals, where the United States is spearheading a step-by-step process aimed at setting up Israeli-Palestinian talks.

The bloodshed at Nahhalin, a village of 2,000 residents not far from Bethlehem, came just after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ended a 10-day tour of the United States, during which he presented his own peace plans to the Bush Administration. Israeli officials, apparently reacting to a potential public relations problem, took the unprecedented step of convening domestic and foreign reporters to announce an investigation.

Villagers Say 6 Died

Villagers said that six residents perished. Four dead could be confirmed at hospitals. Another victim, shot in the head, was brain-dead at Mokassed Hospital in Jerusalem and was expected to die at any time, doctors said. The estimates of the number wounded ranged from 11, the army’s figure, up to 20.

In Nahhalin, bloodstains were visible in a cemetery next to the village mosque, atop the roof of a house and in a field where the victims, mostly men in their 20s, were hit.

Fatma Shukarna, one of the wounded at Beit Jala Hospital, told reporters that she was shot in the back by a border policeman. After her uncle, Kamal, and a neighbor bundled her into a car to take her to a hospital, troops fired on them, too, wounding both Kamal and the neighbor, she said.

The bloodiest incident of the 16-month-old Arab uprising occurred last December, when soldiers shot and killed eight Arabs during a violent funeral in the West Bank city of Nablus. In all, more than 400 Arabs have been killed in the uprising, known in Arabic as the intifada .

It was difficult to get a complete account of Thursday’s shootings. Villagers said that a unit from the army’s border police entered Nahhalin, along the single road that runs through it, sometime after 3 a.m. The inhabitants had just finished a late-night breakfast that is common during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight hours.

From debris on the road, it appeared that the soldiers had to overcome numerous makeshift barricades to reach the town center. Often, such obstacles of boulders and trash slow the approach of soldiers so that townspeople can throw rocks and then retreat.

When the troops reached the center of town, some took up positions in an unfinished house, witnesses said, and shot at villagers who were on the street or hidden in the cemetery.

“It was not like, for example, I hit him with a stone and he shoots back,” said one excited local resident. “No! He just seeing and shooting.”

Omar Shukarna, who witnessed the shooting from his home nearby, added: “It was like a street war. There was no reason for it.”

Israel’s version emphasized the danger in which the troops found themselves. Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna, the Israeli commander on the West Bank, said his men had gone to Nahhalin to arrest suspected stone-throwers who had harassed traffic on nearby roads. About 30 soldiers entered the town around 5 a.m., he said, and were met with “exceptional resistance.”

The border police, part of the army, were armed with tear gas, rubber bullets and regular metal rounds, he said. The shooting lasted for 45 minutes, Mitzna added, confirming that four Arabs died.

“It is not in our interest to have casualties on the West Bank. On the contrary, casualties grease the wheels of the uprising,” said Mitzna, who contended that leaders of the rebellion encourage Palestinians to get in harm’s way in order to renew anti-Israeli fervor.

The border police, who are trained in riot control, have been accused of brutality in trying to suppress the uprising. They were recently dispatched to several areas of the West Bank and Gaza to replace reserve army units, and there have been many recent Arab fatalities in the Gaza Strip.

Several Israeli commentators remarked that use of the border police served only to ease political pressure on the government, both from reservists who complained about serving in the occupied territories and from high-ranking army officers who warned that using the regular army as an occupation police force was eroding training and moral standards.

In a newspaper interview last week, Meshulam Amit, the new head of the border police, responded to the accusations of brutality. He argued that his troops are “not trigger-happy,” saying a border police officer opens fire only if “his life is in jeopardy.”

Also on Thursday, a Bethlehem stone-thrower shot in the back last week by a soldier died, setting off a small demonstration there.