Showdown in Nablus Leaves at Least 4 Dead

In the last hours before the Jewish Sabbath began Friday afternoon, Israel buried another slain soldier. And Palestinians cried, “God is great!” as they pulled the broken body of a Hamas militant from the rubble of an apartment house in a refugee camp near the West Bank town of Nablus.

A predawn showdown at a suspected Hamas bomb laboratory and hours of rioting that followed left three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier dead -- and a fragile cease-fire close to cracking.

An elite Israeli unit rolled into the Askar camp before sunrise to arrest a pair of Hamas bomb makers, an Israeli army spokeswoman said. But shooting broke out, and soldiers peppered the walls with gunfire, apparently setting off bombs within. An explosion rattled the camp and collapsed the top two stories of the building.

By the time the dust cleared, suspected bomb maker Khamis Abu Salem and 20-year-old Israeli soldier Roi Oren were dead. Oren had been shot in the head. The body of Hamas militant Fayez Sadder was later pulled from the ruins.

Palestinians rioted in the streets of the camp and in the ancient limestone city of Nablus for hours, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers. At least one more Palestinian was killed.

The army spokeswoman said the soldiers used only nonlethal methods -- tear gas and rubber bullets -- to control the demonstrators.

Hamas leaders accused Israel of breaking the cease-fire and vowed to respond.

“What happened in Nablus is a crime and terrorism practiced by the Zionist enemy,” Abdulaziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader, said in a telephone interview. “We will respond to today’s crime. The Zionists want us alone to be killed, and we shall defend ourselves.”

But Israeli army officials said thousands of kilograms of explosives were discovered at the scene.

Raanan Gissin, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the suspected bomb lab was a terrorist attack waiting to happen. Israel has no choice but to raid militant strongholds, he said, because Palestinian security forces haven’t collected illegal guns or broken apart radical, heavily armed militant groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as required under the current peace plan.

“They’re not doing what they’re supposed to do,” Gissin said. “If the Palestinian Authority will not assume full responsibility and control and make proper arrests, then we are forced to do it.”

Palestinians and Israelis are locked in a dispute over Israeli occupation and Palestinian obligations to disarm and jail militants. With the exception of central Bethlehem, Palestinians haven’t been granted security control over the West Bank.

Palestinians argue that they have little control over occupied towns such as Nablus and that if Israel wants the violence to end, the soldiers should leave.

But Israel counters that it will not pull out troops until the Palestinians curb the militants. Israeli settlers were shot on a road near Bethlehem this week, and militants have been seen toting guns in the streets. Israel this week abandoned negotiations over withdrawal from two more West Bank cities, saying soldiers will stay until Palestinians make headway against the armed factions.

Ghassan Shaka, the mayor of Nablus and a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, accused Sharon’s government of trying to undermine the Palestinian government.

“Israel seeks a violent Palestinian reaction so as to have the perfect pretext” to end the cease-fire, he said.

The firefight Friday erupted days after Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas visited the Gaza Strip in a continuing effort to calm the tempers of Islamic militant leaders. Palestinians are bitter over Israeli army raids and roadblocks in the West Bank, as well as this week’s release of 300 Palestinian prisoners, which many Palestinians scorned as an insult to the thousands of people still in Israeli custody.

Some militant leaders have threatened to take up arms on behalf of the remaining prisoners. But Abbas, who has spent recent weeks scrambling to find a middle ground between Palestinian political demands and the need to shore up the faltering peace negotiations, urged Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stick to their three-month cease-fire.

There was also violence Friday along the troubled border between Israel and Lebanon. The exchange of fire was the first there since January.

Hezbollah fighters fired mortars and antitank missiles toward Israeli army posts, the army said. Israeli soldiers then opened fire on Hezbollah positions and took to the skies in Apache helicopters and fighter planes to fire into the mountains of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked in retaliation for a car bombing that killed Hezbollah security official Ali Hussein Saleh south of Beirut last weekend.

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Special correspondent Samir Zedan in Bethlehem contributed to this report.