Palestinians fired six mortars at Israeli targets yesterday in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army made a brief foray into Palestinian-controlled territory, as the government of Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, strenuously denied it had succumbed to US pressure in withdrawing its forces on Tuesday night from a chunk of Gaza it had re-occupied for 24 hours.
Apparently undaunted by the Israeli action, Palestinians unleashed two mortar salvos early yesterday morning, firing three shells at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in the Gaza Strip and another three at an army post in northern Gaza. The second salvo was fired from a point very close to where the army had occupied the swathe of Palestinian land on Tuesday. There were no injuries in the mortar attacks.
Despite harsh US criticism over Israel's brief re-occupation of Palestinian territory, Israeli forces again made a foray into Palestinian-controlled land yesterday in Gaza. Army bulldozers, accompanied by a tank, spent just under an hour in an area near the Israel-Egypt border, wrecking a Palestinian Authority police station before withdrawing. There were no injuries in the attack, which Israeli army officials said was in response to gunfire from the station.
Palestinian leaders berated Israel for the action and renewed their calls for an international force to be sent to the region to protect them. Palestinian Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, said Israel's actions were a clear signal that "the Israeli occupation has come back".
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, rejected the criticism, saying the Palestinians' possession of mortar shells was a gross violation of the Oslo peace accords.
"They don't have any reason to fire them, and clearly no justification to aim at civilian life," he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli ministers scrambled yesterday to deny suggestions that the government had kowtowed to the US and withdrawn its forces from the patch of northern Gaza it had occupied on Tuesday as a result of harsh criticism by the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, who termed the invasion "excessive and disproportionate".
By early yesterday, both the Prime Minister's Office and the army had released statements saying that the commander of Israeli forces in Gaza, Brig-Gen Yair Naveh, had been out of line when he suggested on Tuesday that the army was ready to stay "days, weeks, months" in the recaptured areas, and that a hasty withdrawal had always been an integral part of the operation.
Denying accusations by hard line Israeli politicians that the government had caved in to US pressure, the Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, insisted: "We did not withdraw. We went in for a limited period - for 24 hours, in order to leave. Period."
Mr Ben-Eliezer also rejected suggestions that the government had decided to withdraw its troops only after the US threatened to refrain from using its veto power in the UN Security Council, to block a decision to send an international peacekeeping force to the West Bank and Gaza.
The US recently vetoed a Palestinian resolution demanding such a force, which Israel has strongly opposed, viewing it as a potential violation of its sovereignty.
Reuters adds: The UN Commission on Human Rights condemned Israel yesterday for its "disproportionate" use of force in the Palestinian territories. Israel rejected as "not balanced" a resolution brought by 11 countries and easily adopted by the UN rights forum. The text condemned the Jewish state for "disproportionate and indiscriminate recourse to force, which cannot but aggravate the situation and increase an already high death toll".
The US, Israel's principal ally, was virtually alone in voting against three resolutions. "The US is deeply dismayed that in introducing this resolution, Algeria equated the situation in the territories with such tragedies as Auschwitz and Dachau," said US envoy Ms Shirin Tahir-Kheli. Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said Syria would not stand "with arms folded" in the face of "continuing Israeli aggressions against the Arab nation", his spokesman said.