MIDDLE EAST: After a bloody weekend in the West Bank in which the Israeli army killed 11 Palestinians, two of them children and two of them teenagers, some Israeli leaders wondered out loud yesterday whether troops were guilty of becoming trigger-happy.
Five Palestinians were killed yesterday, four of them in the early hours of the morning by the Israeli army near the West Bank town of Hebron in unclear circumstances. While Palestinians said the four were innocent quarry workers, Israeli defence officials provided contradictory accounts: some officers said the four were planning an attack and were carrying wire-cutters and axes, but no guns, while other officials said they were innocent civilians mistakenly killed by the military.
In the northern West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, troops shot and killed Abdel Karim Sadi, the 16-year-old son of Bassam Sadi, the commander of the Islamic Jihad's military wing in the area, in a gun battle.
In the latest of several Israeli army assaults which have resulted in the deaths of Palestinian civilians in recent weeks, an assassination attempt on Saturday in a built-up area in the village of Tubas, east of Nablus, resulted in the deaths of one militant, two children and two teenagers.
A missile fired by an attack helicopter destroyed a car, killing the militant and two 15-year-olds travelling with him. But the main target of the aerial assault - Jihad Sauafta (27), a member of a militia associated with Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah party - escaped. A second missile struck a nearby house, killing a girl of six and a boy of 10.
As darkness descended on Saturday, a Palestinian gunman infiltrated the Jewish settlement of Har Brakha near Nablus and opened fire, seriously wounding a husband and wife who were visiting the settlement, before being shot dead by soldiers and residents.
The killing of the civilians in Tubas, and yesterday's killing of the four Palestinians near Hebron, come only days after an Israeli tank fired a shell into a Bedouin encampment in the Gaza Strip, killing four people, including a mother, her two children and a cousin. After that incident, Israeli Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer expressed regret and said the army would investigate.
Yesterday, Mr Ben-Eliezer repeated his pledge, telling the weekly cabinet meeting he had ordered a probe into these "errors I plan to personally follow up on this matter." But several Israeli leaders, politicians and even ex-military men began questioning yesterday whether the deaths of civilians might be the result of trigger-happy soldiers. Mr Haim Ramon, a Labour Party parliamentarian and challenger for the party leadership, said Israel had to check that the recent "series of mistakes" was not the result of a "change in policy" and an "easing of the finger on the trigger."
"Every harming of innocents," said Mr Ramon, "adds people to the cycle of terror who would never have thought of joining, because they say that Israel does not distinguish between those who carry out acts of terror and those who don't."
A former head of Israeli forces in the West Bank, Mr Zvi Poleg, suggested soldiers at outposts in the West Bank were nervous because of the threat of attack, and that this was the reason for "a light finger on the trigger I back the soldiers and the activities [against terror], but if we want to maintain the norms of an enlightened country then the killing of civilians has to be investigated."
Israeli President Mr Moshe Katzav also called for the army to review recent incidents, asserting that if it reached the conclusion "that soldiers are trigger-happy, it will obviously draw the necessary conclusions". But Mr Katsav said it would be "a hasty conclusion to draw at this point ".