Mideast’s Latest Blasts All But Drown Out Talk of a Cease-Fire

No one may ever know how Shahid Barakat, a second-grader, and his 3-year-old sister, Malak, became accidental martyrs in the Palestinian revolt, collateral damage in a grim confrontation that has claimed nearly 500 lives in seven months.

But when a bomb reduced their two-story home here to a pile of rubble and twisted steel rods Monday night, Shahid and Malak joined a growing list of Palestinians who have died in “mysterious circumstances.”

Killed along with the children was a 27-year-old militant high on Israel’s most-wanted list. The Israelis believed that Hassan Qadi, who lived in a ground-floor apartment beneath the Barakat home, killed an Israeli teenager in January who had been lured to Ramallah by a Palestinian woman whom the youth met through the Internet.

In two other blasts Monday, both in the Gaza Strip, three Palestinians were killed. None of them was known to be active in any faction, according to Palestinian sources. One died when a booby-trapped car in the Jewish settlement where he worked exploded as he passed by. The others died when a truck they were driving exploded in Gaza City in a blast so powerful that it destroyed a nearby home.

Last week, four militants were killed when a bomb exploded on the Gazan border with Egypt.

Palestinians blame the bombings on Israel, which they say is targeting fighters and civilians alike. Israeli officials strongly deny that their nation had anything to do with the recent explosions and instead blame the Palestinians for the blasts.

“They were handling explosives, both in Ramallah and Gaza; this is the exact process in which they make the explosives and they exploded in working accidents, and in the end, they blame us,” Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Tuesday. “There’s no end to their cheek, to their boldness.”

Palestinian officials said Israeli troops moved into the refugee camp in Rafah near the border with Egypt early today and that clashes left a teenager dead and at least 15 Palestinians wounded.

The Israeli military said it knew of no such incursion.

The bombings, a fatal drive-by shooting of a Jewish settler in the West Bank, fresh mortar attacks on Jewish settlements in Gaza and other violent incidents Tuesday seemed to contradict Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ assertion in New York that the two sides have reached “understandings” that he hopes will lead to a cease-fire.

Peres told reporters that he will ask Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today for assistance in achieving a cease-fire agreement. “Without American involvement, it cannot work,” Peres said.

But in Ramallah, the talk was of keeping up the fight, not ending it.

“There is no cease-fire,” said Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah militia in the West Bank, as he marched stone-faced with hundreds of others at the Barakat children’s funeral. “There is only firing, and it is all coming from the Israelis.”

Israel “is still attempting to end the intifada [uprising] through their criminal acts and continuous attempts to assassinate intifada activists,” said Amin Hindi, the head of Palestinian intelligence.

Israeli officials repeatedly have vowed to hunt down militants. Since the Palestinian revolt erupted in September, Israel occasionally has claimed responsibility for the deaths of some activists, and at times passersby have been killed in those attacks.

So, despite Israeli denials of involvement, Palestinians in Ramallah have no doubt that the Barakat children were accidental victims of an attack on Qadi.

Shahid, whose name means martyr, and Malak, whose name means angel, received a martyr’s funeral. Their softly rounded faces gazed out from a poster at the Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque, looking incongruous alongside posters of gun-toting militants slain in clashes with Israelis.

Young men brandishing M-16s, their faces hidden by black ski masks, escorted the double funeral cortege that marched the tiny coffins to the cemetery.

The children’s mother, Abir Barakat, left her hospital bed to watch the burial. She told reporters at the grave site that she had just called three of her four children to the dinner table Monday night, then walked out on the balcony to see whether her husband, Jamal, and the couple’s youngest son were back from the store. The next thing she knew, she was being pulled from the rubble by police. She and her 5-year-old daughter suffered moderate injuries in the blast.

A few hours after the children were laid to rest, hundreds of Jewish settlers buried Asaf Hershkovitz, 31, who was killed as he drove to work Tuesday morning from his West Bank settlement a few miles outside Ramallah. Hershkovitz’s father was killed in a drive-by shooting on the same road three months ago. The son was buried beside his father in a cemetery in Israel.

Speaking at the funeral, Israeli Public Security Minister Uzi Landau told mourners that the conflict with the Palestinians may last a long time but that they should be strong.

“Even if we are to live forever by our sword,” he said, “the message we should send to our enemies who force us to live by our sword is: Not only will they be badly hit, but they have no chance to make us withdraw with their sword.”