Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Palestinian Woman, 95, Killed by Israeli Gunfire

The woman, Fattier Mohammed Hassan, died from a bullet wound in the back, according to an official in a Ramallah hospital quoted by The Associated Press. A second woman in the car, 41-year-old Kifaya Rafat, was wounded in one leg.

Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen gave markedly different explanations of how the shooting occurred. From her hospital bed, Ms. Rafat told the news agency that Israeli troops approached the car as it neared a checkpoint outside Ramallah, broke its windows and then retreated and began firing at it from a distance.

An Israeli military spokesman said that troops tried to stop an automobile traveling on a road barred to Palestinian vehicles for security reasons, then fired into the air when the driver refused to stop. When the car continued down the road, the Israeli official said, troops fired at its wheels in an effort to stop it.

Patricia Smith, the head of Palestine Monitor, an organization that keeps a record of casualties in the conflict, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Hassan appeared to be the oldest victim on record of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

"There are a couple of 85-year-olds, but she's definitely the oldest" Palestinian casualty, she said. "I don't think there have been any older Israeli casualties."

The morning shootings keynoted a day which, like many here lately, seemed dominated by reports of violence and threats of more to come.

Israeli radio reported that a new organization called Islamic Al Qaeda for Palestine had announced its formation on an Internet site, apparently signaling Qaeda's public intention to wage a terror campaign against Israelis as well as Westerners.

And in Hebron, also on the West Bank, the Israeli Army distributed notices warning that it intended to seize and demolish 15 homes to create a secure corridor for the town's Jewish minority to visit a shrine traditionally identified as the birthplace of Abraham, a key figure in both Jewish and Islamic theology.

Israel said that the houses had been empty for more than 20 years and that the corridor and a protective wall were needed to shield Jews who visited the site. An earlier attack by gunmen killed 12 Israeli soldiers and members of the border police.

Mayor Mustafa Natsheh of Hebron said that 30 families lived in the houses and that the demolition was part of a larger plan to clear Palestinians from the town.

Separately, United Nations aid workers here sent a caustic message to the government, attacking the government and the military for the fatal shooting by troops on Nov. 22 of a senior United Nations aid official in Jenin. The official, Iain John Hook, 54, was shot in the back as he stood in a United Nations compound. The army said it was under attack by militants in the camp, an account that aid workers have adamantly denied.

On Friday, the United Nations said Secretary General Kofi Annan had demanded that Israel investigate the killing and punish those responsible.

In their letter on Monday, 62 United Nations workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip said the military had refused to let an ambulance remove Mr. Hook, an act that they called a "refusal to respect the most elementary standards of humanity."

They said the death fit a pattern of abuse that has "steadily eroded" the protection usually accorded United Nations aid workers.

"U.N. staff — international and Palestinian alike — have been verbally abused, stripped, beaten, shot at and killed by Israeli soldiers," the letter said. "There has been armed interference with U.N. employees and vehicles, including attacks on U.N. ambulances and medical personnel."

A second United Nations worker was shot in March while sitting in a marked United Nations ambulance in the West Bank. Another man working with the aid programs, Husni Amer, died in April in army custody.

Israel's failure to investigate the deaths, the letter said, "seems to confirm a pattern of utter contempt on the part of the Israeli Army for the lost lives of these men."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/03/international/middleeast/02CND-MIDE.html

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