Jerusalem Explosion Heightens Tensions 4 Hurt Near Old City; Shooting Spurs Actions

A suspected terrorist bomb exploded near the gate to the Old City here Friday, wounding four Palestinians and heightening tensions in the fourth straight day of violent clashes throughout the West Bank.

This week’s unrest, which killed a 13-year-old Palestinian boy and wounded scores of others, was ignited by the death of three Palestinian workers gunned down Tuesday by Israeli border patrols when the van they were driving careened out of control at a West Bank checkpoint.

The shooting, which the Israeli army claims was accidental, and the failure to even reprimand the two soldiers who fired on the vehicle, has enraged the Palestinian community and tapped a deep well of frustration over a peace process that has been deadlocked for more than a year.

“The fact that three innocent people were shot to death on their way home from work is the root of the immediate crisis. We will get to the bottom of this,” said Bassem Eid of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, which is investigating the incident.

“But there is more to it than that. There is the fact that every day Palestinians are forced to endure the insults, the degradation, and the violation of their basic rights at these checkpoints,” added Eid, a respected human rights worker who has investigated abuses by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

After a 48-hour investigation into the case, the Israeli army decided Thursday night to take no action against the two soldiers who did the shooting. Major General Uzi Dayan said the soldiers did not violate rules of engagement when they fired an estimated 50 rounds of M-16 machine gunfire into the van filled with laborers coming home from their jobs.

“From (the soldiers’) point of view, it was an attempt to run them over,” Dayan told reporters.

But the Palestinians who pass through this checkpoint have complained that this paratrooper unit, which is trained for military combat and which only took over the checkpoint several days before the fatal shooting, was overly aggressive and hostile towards Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a rare apology to the Palestinian community over the incident. Still, senior Palestinian Authority official Hanan Ashrawi said, “Israeli soldiers can kill Palestinians with impunity. They take innocent lives and get away with it.”

The soldiers, clad in flak jackets and the red berets of Israel’s elite paratroopers, defended the two members of their unit. Speaking to a reporter on the condition their names not be used, they tried to explain the tension of working at a checkpoint where soldiers must stay alert to the possibility of being terrorist targets while undertaking tedious hours of checking identification cards and examining vehicles for explosives and illegal shipments.

One of the leaders of the unit pointed to a truck winding down the road that cuts through rocky, green hills of the West Bank, and said, “How do you know that isn’t the one that is going to be carrying a bomb and come straight for us? Every decision here is made in a split second.”