Israeli Extra-judicial Killing Sparks Inter-Palestinian Clashes in Gaza, 3 Killed
A fresh Israeli extra-judicial killing in Gaza Strip on Friday led to an exchange of accusations then to clashes among Palestinians, which claimed three lives and led the Hamas-led government to ban armed displays in public and to open a probe, only hours after a Palestinian who was set free by the Israeli raid on Jericho prison in March blew himself up together with four illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Thursday, an attack that was immediately condemned by President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) troops, backed by tanks and a helicopter gunship, raided and demolished to rubble the US and British-monitored Palestinian prison complex in the West Bank town of Jericho on March 14, kidnapped the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation Front (PFLP) and newly-elected lawmaker Ahmad Saadat and 32 others, and let loose dozens of security and criminal inmates.
Two Palestinian police officers and two prisoners were killed, including one who died from his injuries a few days later.
Three days after the raid the Israeli daily Haaretz warned that the IOF were ‘preparing for possible (Palestinian) revenge attacks.’
Ahmad Masharkah, 24, from the Hebron area in southern West Bank, who had been arrested by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in Jericho prison, was among those who were set loose by the IOF raid.
Dressed like an Orthodox Jew, Masharkah blew himself up together with four Jewish settlers at the entrance of the illegal Israeli colony of Kedoumim in the northern West Bank after nightfall on Thursday.
Palestinian President Abbas on Friday condemned the attack and urged Palestinians to adhere to the ceasefire with the IOF. ‘The Palestinian Authority does not accept it. We condemn it and we don't think it will help the peace process,’ he said in Cape Town during a three-day official visit to South Africa.
The Hamas-led government however said that, ‘The problem is not to condemn or to support,’ Information Minister Yousef Rizka told AFP. ‘The occupation obliges us to defend ourselves.’
Israel’s ‘Defense’ Minister, Shaul Mofaz, immediately ordered the IOF to step up efforts to take out leaders of the Palestinian anti-occupation activists.
Overnight Friday, Israeli land and sea-based artillery pounded a no-go zone unilaterally declared on areas of the northern Gaza Strip, with orders to no longer spare Palestinian police posts in the area.
A football field, a bridge and roads were raided in Gaza City and northern Gaza Strip.
On Friday morning the IOF extra-judicially killed by a car bomb leading anti-occupation activist Abdul-Karim Yousef al-Qouqa, Abu Yousef, 44, in the Gaza Strip after hunting him for more than 20 years.
Israel Radio said al-Qouqa was responsible for many rocket attacks against Israel, but the IOF denied involvement.
The group's spokesman, Abu Abir, told reporters: ‘Al-Qouqa was walking to the mosque to pray. A car was parked in the street. When he approached (the car) it exploded.’
‘This cowardly operation will not go unanswered,’ he added.
Al-Qouqa was killed when his white Subaru blew up in a Gaza City street. His anti-occupation group, The Popular Resistance Committees, initially blamed Israel, and then accused some Palestinian security forces of ‘spying’ on Al-Qouqa, an accusation that led to immediate inter-Palestinian clashes, which spread later during his funeral.
Three Palestinians were killed. Palestinian Health Minister, Basim Naeem, and hospital sources said 36 people were wounded, including seven children, and seven of them seriously, in the clashes, which had subsided by mid-evening.
Abbas, Haniyeh Appeal for Calm
President Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina, issued an appeal on the official WAFA news agency ‘for calm and for gunmen to withdraw from the streets.’
Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh's government held an emergency meeting Friday night to discuss the violence.
Haniyeh ordered an investigation into the killing and urged calm. ‘I want to stress the need not to slide toward civil war,’ he said in a televised interview. ‘Let us not direct our arrows at each other.’
Haniyeh told Reuters that he asked his interior minister, Saeed Seyam, to conduct an immediate investigation into al-Qouqa’s death.
Saeed Seyam, who is in charge of several security agencies, including preventive security, promised to bring al-Qouqa’s killers to justice. He also called for unity. ‘We regret the exchange of accusations and mentioning of names,’ he said.
The Cabinet ministers formed an investigative committee and pledged to remove all ‘armed men’ from the streets of Gaza.
Condemning the ‘crime’ against al-Qouqa, Palestinian Information Minister Rizka said an investigative commission had been established. He also appealed for calm, in remarks made during a press conference after the Cabinet’s emergency meeting.
‘The government regards what happened with deep concern. It's serious... because it came at a time when the government was beginning its work,’ Rizka said.
Violence on Backdrop of ‘Land Day’ Marking
The violence in the Israeli-occupied territories came at a time the Palestinian people were marking the ‘Land Day’ to protest Israel’s 58-year grab of their land.
On Thursday the Palestinian people across Israel, the occupied territories and in exile marked the 30th anniversary of the Land Day.
President Abbas said that land is the most precious possession of the Palestinian people, and that they should protect it in accordance with the international legitimacy resolutions.
In a speech delivered on the occasion on Wednesday night, Abbas said that celebration of the Land Day should be each day, by protecting it from the Israeli settlement and the dangers threatening it.
‘We have declared before, and we reiterate that today, that we refuse all Israeli settlement activities in our lands,’ Abbas said, adding that the Apartheid Wall Israel is constructing in the heart of the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal and embodies the refused policy of unilateral solutions.
Israeli Palestinian Arabs marched in their tens of thousands on the 30th anniversary of deadly protests amid anger at their portrayal as a demographic and security threat in this week's election.
The largest of the protests was held Thursday in the largely Jewish town of Lod, close to Ben Gurion international airport, with demonstrators bussed in from Arab communities around Israel.
Lod was the scene of the notorious Plan Dalet operation led by later ‘defense’ minister Moshe Dayan in 1948, when Zionist paramilitary gangs killed at least 80 Palestinian civilians, and forced out thousands of most of the rest of the town's Arab residents.
Demonstrators, including many women and children, carried Palestinian flags and banners, one reading ‘Terrorism made in Israel’ in English.
Smaller rallies were held in the northern town of Sakhnin, and the villages of Kfar Kanna and Arraba in Galilee, where the original 1976 protests against confiscations of Arab land were held and six demonstrators killed by the Israeli police.
According to Israeli statistics, Palestinian Arabs constitute some 22 percent of Israel’s population, but own only 2.5 percent of its area.
Similar events were organized across the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and by the Palestinian refugee communities in exile.