A Bloody Week in Middle East Ends in Deaths

An especially horrific week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ended Saturday much as it began, with another round of bloodshed, retaliation and calls for more.

Two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank town of Janin when Israeli combat helicopters circled overhead and then opened fire on a car full of gunmen from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, witnesses said.

Rockets slammed into the road near the car. Most of the men were wounded but escaped. Moutasem Sabaa, suffering from an earlier leg injury, was slower than the rest. As he struggled to get free, the helicopters fired again, this time hitting the car dead-on with at least four more rockets.

Sabaa was killed, and the car was crumpled into a smoldering metal twist. A Palestinian policeman who was standing nearby was also killed, and at least 16 people were wounded, including several students walking home from school, witnesses said.

The Israeli army declined to comment on the attack, which Palestinians condemned as the targeted murder of a Palestinian militant. Israel has come under harsh criticism from international human rights groups for its so-called liquidation policy of hunting down and killing known militants, which the Jewish state began using last November in its efforts to crush the Palestinian uprising.

Israel’s Army Radio, however, reported that the intended victim of Saturday’s attack, a senior Palestinian intelligence officer implicated in several shootings and bombings, escaped from the targeted car with minor injuries. The man is believed to be planning to expand Palestinian mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, Israeli radio reports said.

The two men killed were buried later Saturday, with thousands of young Palestinians, some firing assault rifles into the air, chanting calls for revenge.

Also Saturday, Palestinians fired six mortar shells into Jewish settlements inside Gaza and at towns inside Israel, the Israeli army said. One Israeli was slightly injured. Israel responded by charging into Palestinian-controlled territory--specifically, a cemetery where the mortar shells had been launched--and firing a few tank rounds before withdrawing, the army said. And late in the day, a Palestinian man was reported killed when an Israeli tank opened fire on the Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza.

The most recent fighting came at the end of a week in which a 4-month-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli tank fire and two Jewish boys from a settlement in the West Bank were stoned to death and hidden in a cave, presumably by Palestinians.

Each side in the conflict, which has lasted more than seven months, saw these deaths as a kind of milestone in a hate-filled battle that has claimed more than 500 lives.

Iman Hijjo, killed when Israeli shrapnel pierced her tiny body Monday, became the youngest known victim and a symbol to Palestinians of the heavy toll exacted on them in their fight for independence. Her death epitomized what they see as Israeli brutality combined with international indifference.

The girl was killed when Israel, in response to Palestinian mortar fire, shelled the refugee camp in Gaza where she lived. The Israeli army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, was later quoted in a rare admission that his troops used excessive force in this case.

The slayings of the two young Jewish teenagers, whose bodies were found Wednesday, shocked the Israeli public and triggered swift U.S. condemnation. The boys, Yaakov Mandell and Yossi Ishran, from the settlement of Tekoa, south of Bethlehem, had played hooky and were hiking when they disappeared. Their assailants beat them beyond recognition with rocks and boulders, smeared their blood on the cave wall and then fled.

Israelis saw the killings as a barbaric slaughter worse even than the lynching of two Israeli reservists in October. The attack dramatized the depths of hatred here and further cemented a sense among many Israelis that peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians is impossible.

All told, the week was one of deepening despair, and tensions can only be expected to soar in the coming days. On Tuesday, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are planning massive marches and demonstrations to mark the 1948 creation of Israel, a day Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when thousands fled or were forced into exile.

“Whenever it seems that we have hit rock bottom,” Israeli political commentator Hemi Shalev noted in weekend editions of the newspaper Maariv, “a new abyss opens at our feet.”