Small boys die at Martyr's corner, Gaza

Brutal Israeli tactics are having the opposite effect to that intended, reports PHIL REEVES.

GAZA - The bleeding corpse of yet another small boy was being borne away from the streets of the Gaza Strip as diplomatic efforts were continuing in Paris to end the violence convulsing the Middle East.

The death of 13-year-old Mohammed Yousif Abu Aasi from a bullet through the chest came only hours after Israel's Ehud Barak made another demand for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to end the violence - only to find his own Army had provided the world with another example of the excessive use of force.

Mohammed, from a village in southern Gaza, was shot at Netzarim Junction, only metres from the spot where French television caught the final moments of another small boy - 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durra - who was shot dead huddling at his father's side on Sunday.

Now it has happened again. Israel's deputy chief of staff, Major-General Moshe Yaalon, said on Wednesday that the Israel Defence Forces were "using live fire only if fired upon in a life-threatening manner."

This cannot be true. At least one Israeli sniper was at work at the scene of Mohammed Abu Aasi's death on and off on Wednesday afternoon. When the Independent visited the flashpoint, no returning fire was to be heard.

Netzarim Junction is at the point where Palestinian-controlled territory (Area A, as it is known in the discredited language of the Oslo agreements) meets an Israeli-controlled road, which leads to a Jewish settlement and conveniently dissects this tiny oblong of overcrowded land along the Mediterranean coast.

An Israeli Army outpost at the crossroads is heavily fortified, more like a bunker than a base.

Fed up by the failure of the seven-year "peace process" to produce results on the ground, the Gazans clearly want to force the Israelis out of their fenced-in, stifled patch of land, securing a victory that they hope will compare with that of Hizbollah's success in getting Israel out of occupied south Lebanon this year.

The place has come under intense attack for nearly a week, not only from Palestinian youths throwing in rocks and Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, but from Palestinian security men firing their automatic weapons, often wildly. But to threaten the lives of the soldiers within requires heavy weapons. The sort of weapons, in fact, that Israel is using, wholly without regard to the risk to the children drawn to the spot.

Mohammed Abu Aasi will now become another martyr, whether he was hit by a stray Palestinian bullet or shot by the Israelis. Within minutes of his death, workers in the morgue were showing off his punctured body, with its gaping wound through the shoulder and back.

He will be chalked up here as a further victim of brutal tactics that are intended by Barak - a former general - to send a message to the Palestinians of the terrible consequences of continuing to fight, but which have been having the opposite effect.

You only have to look at Netzarim Junction to see that. The place is now known as Martyr's Corner. It seems to be attracting more and more people every day and has become a macabre circus.

Stallholders sell iceblocks to the crowd among the charred tyres and the detritus of unrest as the bullets whizz past.

- INDEPENDENT