Shots, Rhetoric Fly in Dawning Hours of Truce

Before the first 24 hours of the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire ended Thursday afternoon, two Palestinians and an Israeli had been shot to death. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that because of the violence, he will not count the day as the start of the six-week cooling-off period the sides agreed to observe.

Even as Israel and the Palestinian Authority reaffirmed their commitment to staunch the bloodletting that began more than eight months ago, each accused the other of lacking seriousness and said the shaky cease-fire had little chance of surviving.

“This looks much less like a cease-fire and more like a shooting gallery,” said Dore Gold, an advisor to Sharon.

In an incident described by an Israeli army spokesman as “very grave,” a Palestinian gunman killed a senior Israeli military intelligence officer on a busy West Bank road Thursday morning. An Israeli army spokeswoman identified the Palestinian, Hassan abu Shaireh, 30, as an agent who had arranged a meeting with Lt. Col. Yehuda Edri, 45, who was in plainclothes. The two had been in contact for several months, she said.

Israeli police said Abu Shaireh approached the van where Edri and his two bodyguards waited and opened fire at point-blank range. One of the bodyguards was injured; the other chased the gunman into a nearby olive orchard and shot him to death, according to police.

Palestinians gave different reasons for the attack. In a leaflet, a group calling itself the Hussein Abeiat Brigade took responsibility for the shooting and said Abu Shaireh volunteered to carry it out to avenge the death of Abeiat, a Fatah militant the Israeli army killed in November. Others said Abu Shaireh had information that Israel was about to mount an attack on another militant and acted to preempt it.

Still others said that after he was unmasked as a collaborator, Abu Shaireh was given the opportunity to atone for what is considered a capital crime in Palestinian society by killing his handler.

Vengeance may have been the motive for a drive-by shooting late Wednesday near Hizma in the West Bank. The army said it was investigating the possibility that Jewish settlers opened fire on a Palestinian van, killing the driver and injuring three passengers. A previously unknown group calling itself the Troops of Gilad and Shalhevet, a reference to a Jewish security officer and an infant killed by Palestinians, claimed responsibility for that attack in telephone calls to news agencies.

Israeli security forces have been warning for some time that the settlers, who have been targeted since the outbreak of violence, might mount vigilante action if their security situation is not improved.

“I am surprised that there have not been more actions of this kind,” said professor Ehud Sprinzak, a political violence expert at the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya. On the whole, he said, Jewish settlers have acted with restraint in the face of almost daily attacks by Palestinians.

Sprinzak said the existence of a right-wing government, the settlers’ understanding that acts of revenge don’t help much and their feeling that not only they but all Israelis are under siege have so far prevented extremist actions. “There is a frightening balance between self-control on the one hand and the call for revenge on the other,” Sprinzak said in an interview with Israel Radio.

Late Thursday, three Israelis were wounded when Palestinians opened fire on their car in the West Bank, the military said.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo said the Palestinian Authority held the Israeli government responsible for Wednesday night’s shooting. Across the territories Thursday, Palestinian movements continued to seethe with anger over Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s acquiescence to the cease-fire.

In the Gaza Strip, about 1,000 protesters from more than a dozen factions marched in opposition to the agreement and vowed to continue the Palestinian revolt, which began in September, until Israel withdraws from all territory it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War.

But there also were some signs that the truce might be taking hold. Israeli tanks and armored vehicles pulled out of the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. For the first time in months, Palestinian traffic on the main north-south artery flowed smoothly for a time, until demonstrators converged on the site and clashes erupted with soldiers.