Palestinians blame Israelis for deadly phone bomb

JERUSALEM - An Islamic Jihad militant died instantly today when a booby-trapped public telephone blew up while he was using it. Palestinians accused Israel of assassinating him.

In another action likely to anger Palestinians and hamper peace moves, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's month-old government announced it would auction off West Bank land for the building of 700 more Jewish settler houses.

The move drew quick condemnation from the United States, which used much stronger language than in previous statements on Jewish settlements.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Israel should stop such settlement activity, which he described as provocative and inflammatory.

Hours after the settlement announcement, one of three mortar bombs fired at an army roadblock at the Erez border crossing to the Gaza Strip landed in an agricultural area of the Israeli village of Nativ Ha'asara, the Israeli army said. It said no one was hurt.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli troops responded with mortar fire of their own. They also reported an exchange of gunfire.

30-year-old Iyad al-Hardan died in the phone box explosion. He had left his Palestinian Authority prison cell in the northern West Bank city of Jenin to make a call from a phone he often used. He inserted a phone card and the phone blew up, a Palestinian security source said.

Hardan had turned himself in to the Palestinian Authority last month for fear of assassination after he had previously been released after serving a jail term.

"Israel is responsible for this assassination operation by putting explosive materials inside the telephone," the Palestinian source told Reuters. Hardan commanded an Islamic Jihad militant wing opposed to Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

"We will retaliate for the killing of our leaders and we will teach the enemy a lesson they will not forget," Islamic Jihad said in a statement faxed to Reuters in Beirut.

Israel Radio said Hardan's attacks included a 1998 bombing in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda outdoor market, in which two suicide bombers were killed and 21 people were wounded.

Israel had no immediate comment on the killing.

In a similar incident in 1996, Israel blew up accused master bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash, known as The Engineer, with a booby-trapped cellular phone, triggering a wave of revenge suicide bombings in which scores of Israelis died.

Palestinians accuse Israel of assassinating at least 22 activists since the outbreak of their uprising more than six months ago. Israel denies having an assassinations policy but says it targets Palestinian behind attacks on Israelis.

Hardan's death raised to at least 369 the number of Palestinians killed in the bloodshed, along with 71 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs. The Palestinian death toll includes four Islamic militant suicide bombers.
The mortar attack on Nativ Ha'asara was the second to strike Israel proper since the Intifada against Israeli occupation began in late September.

In other violence, the army said Palestinians hurled grenades and petrol bombs at an army outpost on the Egypt-Israel border. Palestinian witnesses reported an exchange of fire, but no injuries were reported in either incident.

Earlier, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teen-ager during a stone-throwing protest in Gaza. And officials argued over which side was to blame for Israel's shooting overnight at a convoy of Palestinian security chiefs.

The three top security officials were on their way home from talks with Israeli counterparts in central Israel when they passed through the Erez crossing linking Israel to self-ruled Gaza.

Israeli troops fired at the convoy, slightly injuring two Palestinian bodyguards. The army said it had responded to shots fired from a jeep. But the Palestinians denied firing shots and accused Israel of deliberately targeting the cars.

Palestinian Public Security Chief Maj. Gen. Abdel-Razek al-Majaydeh, Preventive Security Chief in Gaza Mohammed Dahlan and Intelligence Chief Amin al-Hindi were in the convoy.

Hindi told reporters, "It was a plotted attempt to assassinate the security chiefs." He said they had turned down an Israeli offer to set up a joint inquiry into the incident.

Tawfiq Tirawi, head of Palestinian intelligence in the West Bank, told Reuters the shooting incident and Hardan's killing were continuations "of a series of Israeli aggressions that will have its dangerous results on the Israelis themselves."

An Israeli military official said there was a "good atmosphere" at the Wednesday night talks between Israeli and Palestinian security officials, attended by a member of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but that no substantial progress was made.

Israel agreed to open the Gaza-Egypt border crossing at Rafah and the West Bank-Jordan crossing at Allenby Bridge on Thursday, but made clear it would not completely lift the blockade on Palestinian areas until the fighting eased.

In a written statement, Minister of Defense Binyamin Ben-Eliezer also gave permission to some 3,200 Palestinian workers to enter Israel.

Majaydeh said the gaps between the sides were wide and no further security talks had been arranged. The meeting took place a few hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met Palestinian ministers Nabil Shaath and Saeb Erekat in Athens for the highest level talks in two months.

- REUTERS

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