THE MIDDLE EAST: Two Palestinian gunmen broke through the Gaza border fence into Israel before dawn yesterday, and shot dead four Israeli-Arab soldiers at a poorly guarded lookout post before being gunned down themselves. David Horovitz, in Jerusalem, reports
Israel responded by demolishing two Palestinian police stations inside nearby Gaza, and hinted at a heavier response to follow.
The violence ended three weeks of relative calm and dashed faint hopes that US-led efforts might formalise a ceasefire after more than 15 months of Intifada confrontation.
All four of the dead Israeli soldiers were Bedouin - members of the Desert Reconnaissance unit; although Bedouin are not conscripted, many volunteer, and are frequently deployed in border units because of their tracking skills. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Hamas, which said it was no longer honouring a ceasefire demanded by Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, on December 16th, and largely observed since then.
Somewhat ironically, a Hamas statement said that attacks were being resumed in part because of Israel's "piracy" in capturing a shipload of arms in the Red Sea last week - arms, including plastic explosives and long-range Katyusha rockets, that Israel insists were destined for use against it by the Palestinian Authority.
The authority condemned yesterday's attack and promised an investigation. The killings, it said, would serve as "an excuse" for Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, "to continue his military escalation and siege against our people".
The Authority denied reports that one or both of the gunmen - both of whom were reportedly wearing PA police uniforms - were members of its police or naval police units. Mr Sharon said the attack was part of Mr Arafat's "strategy of terrorism" and that the words of condemnation were "meaningless."
The Authority has also denied involvement in the Karine A arms shipment. Mr Arafat yesterday called the accusation an Israeli "invention" and said he could buy arms "more easily and more cheaply" on the Israeli black market. While acknowledging that some of those captured aboard, including the ship's captain, had served in its naval police, the PA has said they were acting on their own initiative.
Two senior Israeli intelligence officers are now in Washington, briefing the Americans on what Israel says is conclusive evidence tying Mr Arafat and the Authority to the Karine A. The US has not endorsed this position. US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said yesterday that while it was hard to imagine a destination other than Palestinian Authority territory for the shipment, he was still awaiting further Israeli information.
Mr Powell's peace envoy, Mr Anthony Zinni, is due back in the region later this month, having ended a recent four-day trip expressing optimism at the chances for renewing substantive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Aides to Mr Sharon said in the wake of yesterday's shootings, however, that the "clock now had to be reset" and the countdown of the prime minister's "seven days of calm" - his precondition for renewed diplomacy - restarted.
Palestinian Authority officials said in response that the prime minister was clearly bent on evading new negotiations forever. Mr Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mr Arafat, said that Israel's ongoing blockades of major Palestinian cities were hardly helping the Authority "to maintain a cease-fire.
Mr Sharon's spokesmen countered that those sieges would be lifted as soon as Mr Arafat "smashed the infrastructure" of Hamas and other extremist groups, rather than merely making "show arrests" of some activists.