Body count climbs in day of heated Mideast violence

A Palestinian man and his children were among those killed when their home was shelled; the Israeli army denied responsibility.

New York Times

Body count climbs in day of heated Mideast violence — Star Tribune, 20 August 2001 — Star Tribune · Minneapolis, Minnesota · 20 August 2001

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — On a day of intense violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a Palestinian man and his two small children were killed Sunday night when their house was shelled in Rafah, along Gaza’s border with Egypt. How they died was in sharp dispute early today.

Palestinian security officials in Rafah said that the Israeli army had aimed two missiles at the house of Samir Abu Zaid, a member of a group called the Popular Resistance Committees. Abu Zaid, 32, was killed, along with his son, Salman, 7, and his daughter, Alaa, 3. The Israeli army denied responsibility.

It said that Palestinians in Rafah had fired mortar rounds at an Israeli position but missed, hitting the Abu Zaid house instead. The deaths added to a body count that had climbed earlier Sunday, overshadowing a new flicker of hope for resumed talks on an Israeli-Palestinian truce.

The day was studded with violence, including clashes in Rafah in which a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad Abu Arrar, was killed by Israeli soldiers. In Nablus, in the West Bank, Israeli forces shot and killed a man said to have belonged to the Fatah faction of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. There was also renewed fighting in the West Bank city of Hebron.

And Palestinians fired mortar rounds at Israeli settlements in southern Gaza, prompting the army to respond with missiles that damaged a Palestinian security post near Khan Yunis. Also killed Sunday was an unarmed Palestinian man who was shot by Israeli soldiers as he tried to walk around an army checkpoint near Nablus.

Relatives said the man, Muin Abu Lawi, 38, was returning to his village with school supplies that he had bought for his children. An army spokeswoman said the incident was being investigated. Israel has said that a number of bombing attacks have been launched from Nablus, and it has tightened its security cordon around the town.

Previously, only the main paved roads were blocked, but in recent days soldiers have also cut off dirt paths leading in and out of Nablus and other West Bank cities. Through it all, officials on both sides talked hesitantly about the possibility of sitting down to figure out how to make a cease-fire work.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he was in contact with Palestinian officials for that purpose. Palestinian leaders had a mixed response to his overtures. “What Mr. Peres is saying is just a trick, another game to cover the policy of assassinations and attacks against the Palestinian people,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian information minister.

However, another Palestinian minister, Nabil Shaath, said he saw no problem in talking. Foreign diplomats have been encouraging such a dialogue, he added. In theory, a truce is in place, arranged in mid-June by George Tenet, the CIA director. But it has never taken root, and the Israelis and Palestinians are, if anything, further apart than they were two months ago.

Context added by this archive

Five Palestinians are named in this dispatch and four of their ages are given, the youngest three years old. The headline over all of it is an arithmetic. The line beneath the headline puts a man and his children and the army’s denial into one sentence, and six days later the paper would print a reader’s complaint that even that was too definite.

Cite this item

"Body count climbs in day of heated Mideast violence," Star Tribune, 20 August 2001. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2001-016. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2001-016