5 Israelis killed in terror attacks

By Ha'aretz Staff

Despite two terrorist attacks inside the Green Line, the kitchen cabinet last night decided to go ahead with withdrawing the Israel Defense Forces from positions taken over last week in Bethlehem and Beit Jala.

But in response to yesterday's attacks, the cabinet also gave approval for the army to tighten its grip on Jenin and Tul Karm, where yesterday's attackers in Hadera and Wadi Ara are suspected to have come from. Palestinians said Israel was amassing forces on the outskirts of Jenin.

Paratroopers and armor began moving out of Bethlehem and Beit Jala last night around 10 P.M. and the withdrawal was expected to be completed - barring any untoward actions by the Palestinians - by morning today. The departure was coordinated with Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian Preventive Security chief in the West Bank, at a meeting between top IDF officers and Rajoub's officers yesterday afternoon.

That meeting came after four women were killed in Hadera and 44 other people were wounded - two critically - when two Palestinian policemen, acting for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, sprayed pedestrians with gunfire at a main intersection in the town.

All the wounded were treated at Hadera's Hillel Yaffe Hospital. Earlier in the day, a drive-by gunman killed a soldier as he sat in an army sedan on the side of the road at Kibbutz Metzer junction.

At around 2:30 P.M., the two gunmen driving through Hadera in a red Mitsubishi civilian sports utility vehicle, fired long bursts from M-16s at pedestrians on the sidewalks at the mid-town intersection of Hanassi and Rothschild streets, across the street from the city library. Police said later the red jeep was stolen.

The four killed were Lidia Marco, 63, from Givat Ada; Ayala Levy, 39, from Malachinn; Sima Menachem, 30, from Zichron Ya'acov; and Smadar Levy, 23, from Hadera.

The Palestinian Authority issued a statement condemning the Hadera attack, and vowed to capture and prosecute the perpetrators - Palestinian policemen recruited into Islamic Jihad. One was a civilian policeman and the other belonged to the National Security force.

Security services sources said they do not believe the heads of the Palestinian security services knew that two of their men were planning the attack on behalf of the Islamic Jihad.

It was the first time Palestinian policemen have taken part in a terrorist attack inside the Green Line, although members of the Palestinian Military Intelligence apparatus helped in the bombing of a Tel Aviv bus a year ago.

In Washington, President George W. Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, called on Israel and the Palestinians to reduce the level of violence in the region and urged Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestinian-controlled areas. "We've got to get the level of violence down in the Middle East," Card told NBC's Meet the Press TV show, reiterating calls for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian areas it took last week after the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.

The withdrawal from Bethlehem and Beit Jala would go ahead, said government sources, because Israel has adopted a "zone" approach, lowering military pressure on the Palestinian Authority in those areas where the PA asserts its control and guarantees quiet.

"The preparations will continue in accordance with the conditions which have been laid down previously and on condition that the Palestinians honor the conditions which have been set," a statement from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said after he met with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.

The IDF officers and Palestinian security officials met after the new attacks - the meeting was at the Bethlehem district liaison office. "The Israelis said they would pull out Sunday night," Rajoub said.

In Hadera, Master Sergeant Doron Kuter, a detective team leader who shot and killed one of the two terrorists said "any policeman would have done the same." Two other policemen, First Sergeants Avi Ahoni and Eyal Lifkowitz, stormed the terrorists after the jeep stopped and one of the gunmen got out of the car, calmly shooting at fleeing pedestrians.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the attack in a videotaped message. The attackers were identified as Youssef Sweitat, 22 and Nidal al-Jabali, 23, who were shown standing in front of a banner with Islamic Jihad written on it and a picture of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl killed last week. The IDF quickly identified the two as Palestinian policemen, as well as being members of Islamic Jihad.

Earlier than the Hadera shooting, a gunman in a passing car shot and killed 22-year-old Yaniv Levy, as he waited in an army sedan at the intersection to Kibbutz Metzer, not far from Baka al Sharkiya, a few hundred meters away in Palestinian territory and to where the gunman apparently escaped.

An anonymous caller told The Associated Press the Al Aqsa Brigade, which since the intifada began has been affiliated with Fatah, was responsible and the shooting was revenge for the assassination of the organization's Karem Farez Jabar, 23, from Tul Karm.

The Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the attacks and said in a statement it had ordered security commanders "to pursue those who planned it and bring them to trial for violating the cease-fire and the Palestinian commitments and the Palestinian national interest."

"We are committed to the cease-fire which was declared and to the peace process," Yasser Arafat told reporters in Gaza after meeting Austrian Social Democratic Party leader Alfred Gusenbauer.

But Israeli security services sources continue to maintain the PA is not taking effective action against suspected activists. The PA has announced it has arrested 40 members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but Israeli sources say that those arrested are "the retirees of the PFLP, who haven't had anything to do with terror for the past 20 years."

The attacks yesterday in Hadera and in Wadi Ara forced police, IDF and security services sources to reiterate once again that the Green Line is porous to determined terrorists, even when IDF troops are surrounding major terrorist hotbeds like Tul Karm and Jenin.

Yesterday, the government gave its approval to a plan to transfer the emergency authority from the Interior Ministry's director-general to the Defense Ministry director-general, to take over property inside Israel along the Green Line, for the purpose of putting up IDF outposts.

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2001