Friday, January 30, 2004
The raid on Bethlehem was in response to a bus bombing that killed 10 Israelis.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli forces raided the West Bank town of Bethlehem today in response to a deadly Jerusalem bus bombing and demolished the house of the Palestinian policeman who blew himself up in the attack.
Ten Israelis were killed and more than 50 wounded in Thursday's suicide attack, the deadliest in four months. Such bombings in the past triggered large-scale Israeli military raids, but Israel this time appeared to have decided on a more measured response.
The Bethlehem incursion, the first in six months, was small in scale, and Israel did not clamp a closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as it had done routinely in the past.
There were competing claims of responsibility for Thursday's suicide bombing, with Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin announcing today that his Islamic militant group was behind the attack. Just hours after the blast, however, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group with ties to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said it sent the bomber.
Yassin offered no explanation for the Hamas military wing's delayed claim of responsibility.
"The evidence shows that they carried out this attack. ... There is a videotape of the individual who carried out the attack and it will be distributed throughout the West Bank," he said.
Prisoner release
Yassin also said today that his group is making every effort to seize Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips for the release of Palestinians in Israeli jails.
The declaration came a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. Israel released more than 400 prisoners, the vast majority Palestinians, in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers.
The swap boosted the standing of Hezbollah in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and appeared to put Hamas on the defensive.
Yassin said he believes Israel will free Palestinian prisoners only under pressure. "There is no solution to the prisoner issue except with the kidnapping of soldiers of the enemy and exchanging them with our own prisoners," he said.
The target of the Bethlehem raid was the Aida refugee camp on the outskirts of town. Several dozen jeeps and armored vehicles moved slowly through darkened streets in convoys, training spotlights onto houses.
Soldiers ringed the house of the bomber, Ali Jaara. Figures could be seen moving past brightly lighted windows in the building's second floor and walking down an outdoor staircase. A few hours later, troops blew up the house with explosive charges.
The military said only that an operation was in progress in Bethlehem and surrounding areas and that troops arrested several suspected militants. It was the first military operation in the city since troops left the town in July as part of a larger withdrawal called for under a U.S.-backed peace plan.
Palestinian response
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the raid. "Instead of sending soldiers and tanks to Bethlehem, Israel's government should have sent negotiators to resume a meaningful peace process," Erekat said.
Also today, troops shot to death an Islamic Jihad member, Jihad Suwaiti, near the West Bank city of Hebron. The military said the man fired shots from a Kalashnikov assault rifle as soldiers came to arrest him, and troops returned fire, killing him.
In the Gaza Strip, a tank crew shot and killed two Palestinians. The military said it fired on a group carrying two explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades near the Israeli settlement of Dugit shortly after midnight.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, troops demolished six buildings -- one of them a four-story apartment complex -- where Hamas militants captured by Israeli forces used to live.