Israel Calls for Palestinian Crackdown on Militants
Mon Jul 28, 4:11 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Gwen Ackerman
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's foreign minister urged Palestinians to crack down on militants after a soldier's body was found in northern Israel on Monday, although there was no claim of responsibility from any militant group.
Reuters Photo
AP Photo
Slideshow: Mideast Conflict
The death threatened a relative calm that has prevailed in the month since Palestinian militants declared a cease-fire vital to a U.S.-backed peace plan that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) will discuss with President Bush (news - web sites) on Tuesday.
Bedouin trackers and police found the 20-year-old soldier's body in an olive grove as Sharon began a U.S. visit with Bush, who has said Israel's construction of a West Bank security fence could pose a problem in implementing the peace "road map."
Israeli troops fired rubber bullets to break up a protest by Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners who surged toward the fence and tried to tear down a gate, witnesses said.
At least five people, including an American, were wounded in the clash near the village of Anin, the witnesses said.
Palestinians fear the fence, which cuts into the West Bank, will set the boundaries of their envisaged state. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep out suicide bombers.
Israeli police said evidence gathered where the soldier's body was found between two Israeli Arab villages showed it was "a nationalist or terrorist murder."
"We have no indication if it is Israeli Arabs or Palestinians," said police spokesman Gil Kleiman. Police declined to give further details until an investigation was complete.
NO CLAIM OF RESPONSIBILITY
Although no Palestinian militant group claimed responsibility, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom urged Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to crack down on militants, a ministry spokesman said.
"We need to see a real fight against terrorism. It is not enough to talk about it," the spokesman quoted Shalom as saying.
Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan said: "Israel tries to justify every failure by pointing their finger at the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites)."
Despite controversy over Israel's security fence, the parliamentary finance committee reallotted 750 million shekels ($171 million) from the government budget to build the barrier.
Shalom said the fence, a concrete wall in some places and a wire mesh with electronic sensors in others, was "very important" because "it prevents the extremists from destroying the peace process."
In a bid to ease Sharon's meeting with Bush, Israel said on Sunday it would release 540 Palestinian prisoners, including members of militant groups, and remove several roadblocks in the West Bank.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan welcomed the Israeli prisoner decision, saying such steps "help facilitate progress toward peace." But Palestinians seek freedom for all 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Mohammed al-Hindi, a leader of the militant group Islamic Jihad, said that if Israel did not do so, the truce halting attacks could collapse.
The fence and the prisoners remain obstacles to progress on the road map, which is intended to end violence linked to a 34-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence and establish a Palestinian state by 2005.
story.news.yahoo.com. |
