MIDDLE EAST: Six months after the Israeli army pulled out of Bethlehem, troops re-entered the city for 12 hours yesterday, arresting 12 Palestinian men and razing the two-storey home of the Palestinian policeman who killed 10 Israelis in a Jerusalem suicide bombing on Thursday. Some 30 of those injured in the blast were still in hospitals yesterday, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
An Israeli official described the incursion as a "measured response" to Thursday's attack, and officials blamed the Palestinian Authority, which has controlled Bethlehem since last summer, for failing to even try to honour its obligation to thwart the despatch of bombers from there.
It said it was maintaining its policy of blowing up a bomber's family home in an effort to deter other attacks. Mr Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian Authority cabinet minister, said that instead of sending in the troops, Israel "should have sent negotiators to resume a meaningful peace process."
Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service had urged the government to close off the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, and bar many of the 30,000 Palestinians who currently have permits to enter Israel to work, saying it had more than 50 separate warnings of further planned attacks. But the recommendation was overruled.
Responsibility for the Jerusalem bombing, whose civilian victims ranged in age from their early 20s to 50 and included a father of 11, a school caretaker and a student, is now being claimed both by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, and by Hamas.
In addition to carrying out bombings, the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said yesterday that Hamas was bent on kidnapping Israeli soldiers, to secure the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners. Several such kidnappings had been attempted recently, he claimed, but "Israeli soldiers nowadays are as cautious as birds who fear being trapped."
His comments came a day after the Lebanon-based Hizbullah secured the release of more than 400 Palestinian prisoners, and 30 Lebanese and other Arab nationals, in return for a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers it killed and seized on the Lebanon border more than three years ago.
In further violence yesterday, three armed Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza: a Hamas member who fired on Israeli soldiers as they entered his home to arrest him outside Hebron, and two men in a group of five who the army said were spotted nearing the Jewish settlement of Dugit in Gaza. Palestinian sources said the two were policemen. The Israeli army said they were carrying explosives and a rocket-propelled grenade.
Meanwhile, Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom all submitted formal objections to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, arguing that the ICJ is the wrong forum to determine the legality of the West Bank security barrier Israel is constructing. Palestinian officials reiterated that the IJC had full jurisdiction. The issue of the barrier was referred to the court by the UN General Assembly, and hearings are scheduled for late February.
Israel filed a formal affidavit claiming that the court did not have jurisdiction in what was essentially a political issue, and one that needed to be resolved in direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The US objection said the court was not the appropriate forum.
And the British complaint related to a perceived politicisation of the court, dealing with issues beyond its intended remit.