Gunmen fire on Israelis in Hadera after Israeli soldier killed in drive-by shooting

By EITAN HESS-ASHKENAZI
Associated Press Writer

HADERA, Israel – Palestinian militants opened fire at a bus stop in a northern Israeli town Sunday, killing four Israelis and seriously wounding three. Police shot and killed the two gunmen.

The attack, which occurred hours after an Israeli soldier was killed in a drive-by shooting, came as Israel was poised to begin withdrawing from Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank. Israel seized the areas 10 days ago in an operation intended to prevent further attacks on Israelis following the assassination of a Cabinet minister by a radical Palestinian group.

The shooting threw into question the timing of the pullback, scheduled for Sunday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened a meeting with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to decide how to proceed.

Sharon's aide, Raanan Gissin, said the withdrawal would likely go ahead in Bethlehem and nearby Beit Jalla as long as those towns remained calm.

But he said the attack didn't "create the kind of atmosphere to let us continue implementing the withdrawals" in other towns.

"In terms of the withdrawal, if there will be a complete cease-fire in the area of Bethlehem and Beit Jalla, if that is taken care of, it's likely that we will execute what we have committed to do," he said.

The pullbacks from Bethlehem and Beit Jalla were to have been test cases for withdrawals from four other West Bank towns Israel occupied starting Oct. 18 in search of the Palestinians who killed Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. Those towns are Jenin, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Tulkarem.

Witnesses said the Palestinian gunmen drove slowly through central Hadera in a car with Israeli license plates, then opened fire on the bus stop.

"Two weapons were aimed at the two sides of the road and then terrorists opened fire," the area police chief, Yaakov Borovsky, told Israel Radio.

Plainclothes police detectives shot and killed one gunman who had gotten out of the car and another Palestinian who remained inside, witness Danny Kerem told Army Radio.

"I heard bursts of fire and I thought it was lightning," said another witness, Yaakov Roth-Levy. "I saw two people sitting with bowed heads and one lying on the ground. A red car was being fired on. I saw the terrorist fall out of it."

The bodies of the attackers were left at the scene for more than an hour because of fears they were booby-trapped.

The militant Palestinian Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the attack in a videotaped message. The attackers were identified as Youssef Sweitat, 22, and Nidal al-Jabali, 23, and were shown standing in front of a banner with Islamic Jihad written on it and a picture of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl killed last week.

It was the second shooting incident Sunday. Earlier, gunmen shot and killed an Israeli soldier in a drive-by shooting in Israel near the border with the West Bank. An anonymous caller told The Associated Press that the Al Aqsa Brigade, affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, attacked an Israeli military vehicle, revenge for Saturday's killing of a Fatah activist in nearby Tulkarem.

Hadera, north of Tel Aviv, is at one of Israel's narrowest points, just seven miles from the West Bank, and it has been a frequent target for attacks by Palestinian militants.

Israeli officials indicated that the attacks would not delay Israel's pullout from Bethlehem, where no exchanges of gunfire were reported through the day, but might affect the rest of the withdrawal.

Israel delayed the scheduled Saturday pullback by a day, charging that the Palestinians had not fulfilled their part of the agreement to stop all gunfire and attacks against Israelis. The Palestinians said the pullback was supposed to be unconditional and that Palestinian police would move in after the Israelis withdrew.

Exasperated U.S. officials refused to take sides. "We regret what's happening, and we think both sides should try harder to get their act together," said Paul Patin, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. The United States has repeatedly insisted that Israel pull its troops out of the six towns and stay out of Palestinian territory.

The Israeli incursions represented the most extensive Israeli military action in 13 months of fighting. They left 38 Palestinians dead, failed to net all of Zeevi's killers and angered the Bush administration, which worried that further unrest would undermine support among Arab nations for its anti-terrorism campaign.

Since fighting erupted more than a year ago, 730 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 191 on the Israeli side.

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