British U.N. Aid Worker Killed in W. Bank

A United Nations relief official working at a refugee camp in the West Bank was shot to death Friday during a pitched gun battle between Israeli forces and armed Palestinians, the first foreign U.N. aid worker to be killed in two years of fighting.

It was unclear whose bullet killed Iain Hook of Britain, a senior manager for the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees. Just minutes before he was shot, Hook, who was in his early 50s, was on the telephone with the agency’s Jerusalem office trying to arrange a safe exit from the area for his staff.

A spokesman at the United Nations in New York said Secretary-General Kofi Annan was saddened by Hook’s death and “very disturbed by the fact that the Israel Defense Forces refused immediate access for an ambulance” at the U.N. compound in the Jenin refugee camp.

The Israeli army said Hook was evacuated as quickly as possible.

Also killed Friday in the camp was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot by Israeli forces. In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli soldier died under sniper fire and a Palestinian was killed as he tried to enter an Israeli settlement, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Israeli troops began a major deployment throughout the Palestinian territories early Friday in response to a suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem on Thursday that killed 11 people and injured dozens.

The West Bank city of Bethlehem, the area from which the bomber came, was reoccupied, with 22 people arrested and the home of at least one suspected militant demolished, according to an Israel Defense Forces spokesman.

Apparently worried about the situation’s volatility, U.S. diplomats asked the Israelis to withdraw from Bethlehem as soon as possible. The city was the site this year of a 39-day siege at the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square.

Besides Jenin, Israeli troops Friday entered the West Bank cities of Tulkarm and Nablus as well as the Gaza Strip.

In Jenin, tanks and armored vehicles surrounded the home of Abdullah Wahsh, a suspected member of the Islamic Jihad militant group. It was during the ensuing gunfight that several stray bullets hit the U.N. compound, fatally wounding Hook.

The Israeli military said it was investigating Hook’s death. Palestinians claimed he was felled by Israeli bullets.

“The latest attack shows how extremist the current Israeli government is,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and political activist. “They are willing to kill not only Palestinians ... but also members of the international community who are here trying to help the Palestinian people.”

An Israeli military spokesman, however, said, “Because the terrorists act inside urban areas where there are civilians, women and children, they draw the IDF to fight in urban areas and endanger the lives of civilians there.”

Hook directed the U.N. Relief and Works Agency’s project to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp, which was devastated by Israeli army operations last spring. He had started the job less than two months ago.

“He was extremely energetic, full of ideas and plans,” said Sami Mshasha, the agency’s spokesman. “It’s very unfortunate, very sad. It underlines the difficulties of working in this area.”

Despite continuing violence in the last two weeks, a poll released Friday in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot suggested that 60% of Israelis and about half the Likud Party of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon support the formation of a Palestinian state after peace negotiations.

More surprising, the poll found that a substantial majority of Likud members, 65%, support the evacuation of at least some of the controversial Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

The poll also found that Sharon commanded a strong lead over Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the race to lead the Likud Party. A primary election between the men will be held Thursday, and a general election Jan. 28.

Netanyahu says he would take a tougher line against the Palestinians, including the expulsion of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Any talk of negotiation with the Palestinians was beyond the Israelis living in the working-class neighborhood of Ir Ganim in southern Jerusalem, where the suicide bomber’s detonation on a crowded commuter bus claimed 11 lives, including those of four children, Thursday morning.

Many neighbors of the victims attended their funerals, then gathered at the hairdresser, at the local community center and in small shops to talk.

“If they have reached here, my home, then they can strike anywhere. Nothing is safe anymore,” said Rivka Shitrit, 48, an assistant kindergarten teacher, who was getting her hair done at a small salon. “It didn’t used to be like this. This wasn’t how I grew up.”

For Alice Benaim, 61, a part-time manicurist, the bombing hit close to home: Her sister would have been on that bus, but on Thursday she stopped to take out the garbage first.

“It was her luck that she did that -- she even ran to the stop and knocked on the bus door, but the driver wouldn’t open it,” Benaim said.

In the face of such attacks there is only one solution, the women said: all-out war. “We’re not living a normal life like other countries, which had one or two terror attacks,” said Sima Perry, another woman who was at the hairdresser’s.

“We can’t take any more of these terror attacks.”