MIDDLE EAST: Israeli soldiers killed seven Palestinians yesterday in the Occupied Territories, including four in a raid in southern Gaza, while inside Israel, security forces arrested three Israeli Arab citizens on suspicion of planning attacks, in the latest in a rising number of such cases.
Troops backed by tanks and helicopters thrust into the Rafah refugee camp in the early hours of yesterday morning, in what the army said was a search for tunnels used to smuggle weapons from the Egyptian side of the border into Gaza. A gunman was killed during the firefight that erupted as the Israeli forces moved into the camp, which has proven a stubborn flashpoint of resistance since the start of the intifada.
Three other people were killed when they were hit by fire from a helicopter gunship. The army said all three were armed "terrorists", while locals insisted they were unarmed residents of the camp.
Four soldiers were injured during the raid when a bomb went off underneath a tank. The militant Hamas group claimed responsibility, calling the strike a "gift to the Iraqi people". In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, soldiers shot dead a 14-year-old boy during an operation aimed at capturing a militant. The army said troops had fired at the boy after he ignored calls to halt and fled. But witnesses at the scene said he was shot after opening the door of his home. Troops also killed a Hamas militant in Nablus, while witnesses said a farmer was shot dead by the army near the Jabalya refugee camp in the Strip yesterday evening.
Inside Israel, meanwhile, a court extended the remand of three young Israeli Arab men - all cousins from the northern town of Kafr Manda - for alleged involvement in the militant Islamic Jihad group.
News of their arrest, which was released yesterday even though they were detained two weeks ago, is likely to further stoke tensions between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Only two days ago, Israel's internal security service said it had uncovered another three-man cell, in the northern Israeli Arab village of Jaljulya, which it has accused of running an Islamic Jihad bomb-making lab.
At the beginning of the week, two young Israeli Arabs were each given nine life sentences for aiding a suicide bomber who blew himself up on a bus in the northern city of Haifa in August last year, killing nine people.
Many Israeli Arabs, who number around one million, have become increasingly alienated from the state over the years, with the areas in which they reside suffering from poorer services and substantially less government funding than Jewish areas.
Responding to the arrests, Mohammed Zaydan, the mayor of Kafr Manda, said that despair, ongoing discrimination, and the high unemployment in the Arab sector, was pushing Arab youth towards association with Palestinian groups, with the aim of carrying out attacks on Jews. But Mr. Zaydan added that this did not justify such actions.