Israel Braces for Possible Retaliation to Air Strike
Suspected Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli motorist early Thursday as Israel's foreign minister warned that civilians would likely ``pay dearly'' for the airstrike that killed a top Palestinian militant and 14 others.

As it braced for possible Palestinian retaliation, Israel said Thursday it was pressing ahead with a planned transfer of millions of dollars in frozen funds to the Palestinians and with other goodwill gestures.

In violence Thursday, a rabbi was killed and another person seriously injured after gunmen opened fire on their car near the Jewish settlement of Alei Zahav, south of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya in the West Bank, rescue officials and the military said.

The gunfire, coming from the nearby Palestinian village of Burkin, continued after rescue crews arrived and only stopped after Israeli tanks drove up and returned fire, medic Avner Mullah told Israel Radio.

The shooting came as Israelis braced for promised retaliation by the militant group Hamas following the Tuesday bombing in Gaza City that killed Hamas military leader Salah Shehadeh and 14 others, including nine children.

``I know that there is very serious escalation,'' Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Army Radio. ``I fear that innocent people will pay for it dearly.''

A day earlier, he called the strike a ``mistake,'' and said, ``I cannot explain mistakes.''

He admitted knowing that the Palestinian Authority had been conducting negotiations with various militant groups, including Hamas, aimed at forging a cease-fire. But he said not all factions were on board and it was not worth talking about since the agreement had not been finalized.

The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, met late Wednesday to consider condemning Israel for the bombing, just the latest in a string of denunciations from the United States, Europe and the Arab world. A small group of Americans also burned U.S. and Israeli flags at a demonstration in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza.

Critics -- including the Americans, Europeans, Arab countries and Palestinians -- have dismissed Israel's explanation that it was aiming only for Shehadeh and did not mean to kill so many people, questioning why such a heavy bomb was used in a densely packed residential neighborhood against a single target.

…Military commanders insisted they did not know civilians would be hurt.

More than 100 people were injured in the strike, most of them in adjoining structures damaged by the bomb, reported by Israeli media to weigh a ton.

Israeli military expert Reuven Pedatzur said the debate over whether Israel knew civilians were with Shehadeh was largely irrelevant.

``The decision to use a one-ton bomb was an immoral decision,'' he told Israel Radio. ``It makes no difference if there were people in the room with him or not when it is clear that the houses round about will be destroyed.''

Countering the wave of international criticism, Israel on Wednesday sent Peres, its best-known peace advocate, on a tour of the offices of foreign news media in Jerusalem, where he said, over and over, that the bombing was a mistake.

Peres said that as goodwill gestures, Israel would release some of the funds it has been keeping from the Palestinian Authority and would allow 4,000 Palestinian workers to enter Israel. Also, he said, curfews in West Bank cities and towns would be lifted for longer periods.

However, the gestures did not mollify the Palestinians, who called the Tuesday bombing a massacre and have been demanding much wider Israeli measures to ease restrictions in the West Bank.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html