Body of a Missing Israeli Settler Found

Israeli army search parties found the body of a 34-year-old Israeli this morning who had disappeared after reporting for work in the greenhouses of a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday.

Roni Tzalah was found in an onion field near the greenhouse where he was last seen, Israel Radio reported. Israeli army and Palestinian security forces, in a rare act of cooperation, both searched for Tzalah throughout the night. Israeli and Palestinian security forces used to routinely cooperate, but the relationship broke down after violence erupted in the Palestinian-controlled territories at the end of September.

Israel Radio reported this morning that Hamas, the militant Islamic movement, claimed responsibility for Tzalah’s slaying.

His empty car was found Sunday night in the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. It had been torched but was equipped with a satellite tracking device that allowed it to be traced. Army helicopters overflew Khan Yunis and other areas of southern Gaza through the night Sunday, firing illuminating flares. But in the end, Tzalah’s body appeared to have been found in Israeli-controlled territory.

Tzalah lived in Kfar Yam, one of a cluster of Jewish settlements in Gaza known as Gush Katif that Palestinians have often fired on since the violence erupted in the West Bank and Gaza.

Palestinian security personnel and militiamen have declared war on Jewish settlers, who they say are living illegally in the West Bank and Gaza. Settlers have repeatedly been the targets of drive-by shootings and roadside bombs during the current wave of violence, which has claimed more than 350 lives, most of them Palestinian. Most of the Israelis who have been killed have been settlers or soldiers.

Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak sent “very severe warnings” to senior Palestinian officials that Israel expected Tzalah to be returned unharmed, Israel Radio reported Sunday night.

Tzalah’s apparent slaying comes as Israeli and Palestinian officials are engaged in talks aimed at renewing security cooperation and lifting Israel’s military siege of towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza.

In recent days, the army has taken steps to ease its closure of the Palestinian-controlled territories. Most Palestinians still are banned from entering Israel to work, but the army has reopened the Palestinian airport in Gaza and border crossings to Egypt and Jordan. It has also removed roadblocks and checkpoints erected along roads inside Gaza that had, in effect, cut the strip into three parts.

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Times researcher Fayed abu Shamallah in Gaza contributed to this report.