An Israeli historian said yesterday he had uncovered credible evidence that troops massacred 200 Palestinians in a single village on the day that Israel came into being in 1948.
Mr Teddy Katz, who researched events in the village of Tantura for a master's degree, said he had spoken to witnesses, including soldiers who were present, to support his findings.
"It started at night and was over in a few hours," Mr Katz said of the attack on May 15th, 1948.
"From testimonies and information I got from Jewish and Arab witnesses and from soldiers who were there, at least 200 people from the village of Tantura were killed by Israeli troops."
From the numbers, this was definitely one of the biggest massacres, he said.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had no evidence of a massacre in Tantura in May 1948. But the army said that once it had the research in hand, it would be able to conduct a renewed examination.
Mr Katz said 14 Israeli soldiers were killed in the attack on the village. The man who led the assault was quoted on Tuesday as saying the villagers' deaths were a consequence of war, and that reports of a massacre were just stories.
Mr Katz said the attack was mentioned in only a handful of Palestinian history books, and in the Israeli army archives.
Tantura, near Haifa in northern Israel, had 1,500 residents at the time. It was later razed to make way for a car park for a nearby beach, and the Nahsholim kibbutz.
Mr Katz said the killing in Tantura was "more tragic and bigger" than in the village of Deir Yassin, just west of Jerusalem, where scores of Palestinians were killed on April 9th, 1948, in an assault by Jewish armed groups.
Reports just after the Deir Yassin killings spoke of some 240 deaths, though Israeli and Palestinian historians now accept that the number of fatalities was probably closer to 120.
President Clinton said yesterday he was "quite hopeful" about the Syrian-Israeli peace talks despite their postponement this week. "I would not say the gaps in the positions are 90 per cent. I'd say they're much closer to 10 per cent," he said.