Palestinian Leader Fires 3 Aides After Militants Shell Jewish Area
By GREG MYRE
Published: February 10, 2005
JERUSALEM, Feb. 10 - In the first serious test of the Israeli-Palestinian truce, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas fired three of his security chiefs today, shortly after Palestinian factions launched a mortar and rocket attack on Jewish settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.
The move indicated Mr. Abbas's intention to enforce the cease-fire he announced along with Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at their meeting in Egypt on Tuesday.
In the wake of the shelling, Mr. Abbas held an emergency session of the Central Committee of his Fatah movement, and the body denounced the attacks by Hamas and other factions. The committee called the shelling "irresponsible acts that harm our security and the high national interests of our people."
Mr. Abbas then sacked three prominent security chiefs in Gaza.
The swift action by Mr. Abbas is in sharp contrast to the style of his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, who died in November. After the Palestinian uprising began in 2000, Mr. Arafat did not demand that the Palestinian security forces act to prevent violence against Israel.
However, Mr. Abbas's moves could meet resistance among some elements in the Palestinian security forces, who view a crackdown against fellow Palestinians as the equivalent of subcontracting work carried out on behalf of Israel.
And Mr. Abbas is courting confrontation with Hamas and the other armed factions, which assert that they are not bound by Mr. Abbas's truce.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions began the mortar and rocket barrage before dawn today, calling it retaliation for the deaths of two Palestinians in southern Gaza a day earlier.
More than 20 mortars and two rockets rained down on the main Jewish settlement bloc in the southwestern corner of Gaza, with the attack centered on the Neve Dekalim settlement, the Israeli military said. No one was hurt, though one house was slightly damaged.
Two other armed factions, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, also issued statements saying they took part in the shelling.
The Palestinians have fired several thousand mortars toward the settlements in the past four years, but casualties and serious damage are rare. The shelling has diminished, though it has not stopped altogether in recent weeks after the factions made a pledge to Mr. Abbas to suspend attacks.
Mr. Abbas dismissed Omar Ashour, the head of national security in southern Gaza, along with Saeb al-Ajez, Gaza's police chief, and Abdel Razek al-Majaida, the head of national security in Gaza and the West Bank.
The firings were linked to the shelling in southern Gaza, as well as an assault on the Palestinian Authority's main jail in Gaza City, where assailants shot dead three prisoners today in revenge killings that are part of a local feud.
Mr. Abbas, elected president of the Palestinian Authority just a month ago, has also been emphasizing the need for law and order in the Palestinian areas.
Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel, had refrained from major attacks in recent weeks following its pledge to Mr. Abbas. But the group said today's shelling was in response to "the Zionist crimes that haven't stopped against our people."
The statement was a reference to Wednesday's shooting death of a Palestinian man who was hit while on foot near a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza. The Israeli military said soldiers fired warning shots when four Palestinians approached a settlement, but the military said it was not aware of Palestinian casualties.
Hamas also cited the death of one of its members in an explosion on Wednesday. But Palestinian officials said the man's death was caused by the premature explosion of a bomb he was handling.
Near the West Bank city of Ramallah today, Israeli troops fired on a Palestinian man who refused to stop at a roadblock near, the military said. The car crashed into a ditch, and the Palestinian was killed. The military said an investigation found the man was driving a car stolen from Israel.
The violence of the past two days demonstrated the way that individual incidents can quickly escalate into major confrontations threatening a cease-fire intended to end more than four years of fighting.
Israel called on the Palestinian leadership to prevent attacks, but the response was relatively low key.
"No one wants the understandings to break down two days after the summit," said Gideon Meir, a senior official in Israel's Foreign Ministry. "It's not in the Israel's interests, and it's not in the Palestinians' interests."
Mr. Abbas, who works out of Ramallah, was expected to travel to Gaza on Friday and talk with the armed factions about the cease-fire. The Palestinian leader says he wants to co-opt the factions, but the latest developments will make his job that much harder.
In the violence at the Gaza Central Jail, a large group of armed men burst into the facility before dawn and located several prisoners accused of a recent killing, according to Palestinian witnesses and security officials.
The assailants killed two men in their cells, and seized a third man, Hussein Abu Yusef, who was taken to the home of Adnan Issa, a leader of Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement in Gaza, the witnesses said.
Mr. Yusef was accused of killing Mr. Issa's brother in a recent dispute. The gunmen forced Mr. Yusef to confess to the killing, and then beat him before shooting him dead, the witnesses and security officials said.
