Gunmen Burst Into Home, Kill 5 Israeli Settlers


June 21, 2002

By MARY CURTIUS and TRACY WILKINSON, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Five Jewish settlers, including a woman and three of her children, were killed Thursday night after Palestinian gunmen burst into a home, took hostages and fought a gun battle with Israeli troops. The attack came as the army widened its operations throughout the West Bank.

At least one Palestinian assailant was also killed in the raid on the Itamar settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus north of here. Eight Israelis were wounded, including another child.

Before dawn today, Israeli troops and armor moved into Nablus and began taking Palestinian prisoners. It was the latest incursion as the army fulfilled new orders to seize Palestinian territory following a wave of suicide bombings. Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested and homes searched in four other West Bank cities and several villages. Israel issued a limited call-up of reservists ahead of what is expected to be a protracted military campaign.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cut short a public appearance Thursday night when he learned of the Itamar attack, which came on the heels of two suicide bombings that killed 26 Israelis in 36 hours. An emergency Cabinet meeting was called for today.

Sharon spoke to President Bush briefly by telephone, the conversation largely focused on the current round of attacks against Israelis.

It was the second infiltration in three weeks into Itamar, home to some of Israel's most militant settlers. On May 28, three teenage settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman on a basketball court in the settlement.

In Thursday night's attack, the gunmen rushed into the unfenced settlement and opened fire as they ran into a house, witnesses said. Inside, they apparently shot to death a woman identified as Rachel Shabo and three of her children, ages 16, 12 and 5, Israeli state radio reported. A neighbor who rushed to help was also killed. Other children in the large family reportedly saved themselves by hiding in bedrooms and the bathroom.

Soldiers who converged on the house shot it out with the Palestinians in a gun battle that lasted nearly two hours. One of the Palestinians was killed, the army said. A second body believed to be that of the other Palestinian was found in the ruins of the house, a portion of which caught fire and burned.

"We heard gunfire and felt that this was something more than target practice," settler Yaakov Heiman told Israeli television. "We heard shouting that a terrorist had entered the settlement.... It is just awful."

Two Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for the attack. One is an armed offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose leader was assassinated by Israel last year. The other is the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Arafat on Thursday urged an end to attacks on Israeli civilians.

Many Palestinians distinguish between attacks inside Israel and those that target settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War that Palestinians claim.

Anticipating another Israeli military offensive following a spate of deadly suicide bombings, Palestinians on Thursday voiced both dread and defiance.

In Bethlehem, Kalkilya, Jenin, Tulkarm and many villages, tens of thousands of Palestinians were confined to their homes by military curfews that the Israeli army said would last "until the missions are completed." In Jenin, more than 2,000 men were rounded up overnight, although most were released by morning. Troops conducted house-to-house searches in many communities as security officials warned that more suicide bombers were heading for Israeli cities.

Israeli forces met with little resistance. Palestinian police and other security officers disappeared from their posts and militants went into hiding. None of the armed men who are usually a common sight on the streets here in Ramallah could be seen Thursday. It was a city visibly hunkering down for the anticipated invasion.

Palestinians seemed to sense that this time, Israeli fury is so great that the government may soon unleash a military operation that could dwarf Operation Defensive Shield. That offensive, launched in March after a bomber killed 29 Israelis attending a Passover dinner, was the largest military sweep through the West Bank since the Middle East War.

The back-to-back suicide attacks in Jerusalem this week have triggered a chorus of calls for the government to take harsh action.

The Itamar raid was sure to solidify Sharon's resolve.

"We are in the middle of a war," he told a conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday night, after being notified of the violence in Itamar. "A hard war, a cruel war that Palestinian terrorists are carrying out against old people, women and children."

The Israeli daily Maariv said in an editorial Thursday that the army "must embark on Operation Defensive Shield 2." Beneath pictures of an injured Israeli infant being carried into a hospital after Wednesday's bombing and mourners weeping at the funeral of someone killed in Tuesday's bombing, the newspaper said that this time, the operation should be conducted "without restrictions, without concessions, throughout Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], in all of the Gaza Strip."

In an anguished front-page column in the same newspaper, Editor in Chief Amnon Dankner raged at Palestinians that "you are a suicidal-terrorist society."

From now on, he said, "when we have to protect ourselves from you by means of action, on behalf of what morality will anyone be able to complain to us if we watch out for ourselves and are less and less heedful of treading on your human dignity and the dignity of your lives, which you yourself have been obliterating for so long?"

In Ramallah, residents awakened Thursday morning to the news that troops and tanks had rolled into neighboring Beitunia, to the west, and were conducting house-to-house searches there after imposing a curfew.

People waited to see whether the tanks would continue into Ramallah, then began opening shops and businesses at midmorning when it seemed they had stopped in Beitunia. But few believed the reprieve would last long.

"I figure the troops will get here tomorrow or the next day," said Abbas abu Dahab, owner of the My Name clothing boutique in Ramallah. Abu Dahab, 53, visited the Al Quds bakery next to his store to buy a bag of sesame rolls "so I can have something to eat if I'm wrong and I get trapped in the shop."

In Beitunia, Adnan Mahmoud, a 45-year-old teacher, defied the military curfew to get his daughter, 18-year-old Randa, to her matriculation exams.

The pair hurried on foot past shuttered shops, down the village's abandoned main street, prepared to trek at least a mile to Al Birah, where Randa was scheduled to take the comprehensive exams every Palestinian student must pass to receive a high school diploma.

"We were afraid to leave the house, because we heard shooting earlier and we were not sure what was going on," Adnan Mahmoud said.

"But we had to leave, because my daughter had to sit for her exams. So we overcame our fears," he said.

Behind them an Israeli tank blocked the main road.

As Israelis buried more dead Thursday, including a woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter, debate intensified within the government over its new policy. Announced Wednesday, it calls for reoccupying stretches of Palestinian-controlled territory after every attack.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer insisted that the policy does not mean full reoccupation of the West Bank.

He said the military incursions are for security reasons only and would last only two or three weeks.

But Palestinians said they believed that Sharon means to reoccupy the West Bank and destroy whatever remains of the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

Yasser Abed-Rabbo, the Palestinian Authority minister of culture and information, said, "Sharon wants to create a new status quo, where all the world, including the Americans, will talk only about his withdrawal from Area A," the 40% of the West Bank under Palestinian control, and not whether Sharon is prepared to restart negotiations aimed at ending the bloodshed and reaching an agreement.

Arafat, speaking to reporters Thursday outside the ruins of his headquarters in Ramallah, said he condemned "these terrorist attacks against civilians, Israelis and Palestinians." A statement from Arafat calling for an immediate halt to shootings and bombings was published Thursday in Palestinian newspapers, but Arafat canceled a television appearance planned to make the same plea.

The two main militant Islamic groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for many of the suicide bombings, rejected Arafat's appeal, defending their attacks as legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation and vowing to continue them.

In Washington, meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Russia and Britain and the European Union's foreign policy chief to brief them on a U.S. peace proposal that Bush had been expected to announce this week. Powell did not get into specifics of Bush's planned speech, according to one of the foreign ministers he called, who requested anonymity.

The Bush address, which is expected to call for creation of a provisional Palestinian state, was delayed following the most recent suicide bombings and now is not likely to occur before next week.

Curtius reported from Ramallah and Wilkinson from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.