Killings in West Bank endanger new Israeli-Palestinian truce
GAZA CITY -- Israel and the Palestinians agreed yesterday to halt their latest round of rocket attacks and airstrikes, officials said, but the deal threatened to fall through before it was officially announced, after Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
Israeli forces surrounded a house in the West Bank town of Qabatiyeh after sundown yesterday and killed two militants, including Jihad Zakarne, an Islamic Jihad member accused by Israel of planning a deadly suicide bombing last week, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said.
Israel Radio reported Israeli troops killed a third Palestinian, who was planting a bomb nearby. The Israeli military had no comment.
Islamic Jihad responded with a statement threatening to hit Israeli towns near Gaza and called on ''Palestinian factions to be united to confront the Zionist campaign against the Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian people in the West Bank."
Palestinians reported hearing the sound of small explosions like rockets in northern Gaza, but the military said nothing had landed in Israel.
Militants in Gaza have retaliated for such Israeli raids in the West Bank by firing homemade rockets at Israel, triggering Israeli retaliation. Since the suicide bombing in the central town of Hadera, Israel has targeted Islamic Jihad militants in airstrikes, killing eight Palestinians -- three of them bystanders -- and fired artillery shells at rocket launching areas in Gaza.
It was the kind of escalation that the informal agreement was designed to stop. Militant groups planned a meeting late yesterday at an undisclosed location, where they were expected to endorse the latest truce, but the Israeli operation in the West Bank put that in doubt.
At stake for the Palestinians is the economic survival of Gaza. With violence simmering, Israel has kept a tight hold on the exits from the coastal strip, citing security concerns.
The main Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt has been closed for most of the time since Israel withdrew from Gaza last month without an agreement on how to handle security. Vital cargo and worker crossings with Israel also have been closed periodically by the Israelis.
Yesterday it reopened two that have been shut since the suicide bomb attack killed five Israelis on Wednesday.
