Nov 11, 7:08 PM (ET) By DAN PERRY JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian toddler and wounded two others in Gaza Monday, hospital officials and witnesses said. The shooting came as Israeli leaders weighed a military response to a Palestinian shooting rampage that killed five people, including a mother and her two young sons. In the second straight day of violence to take children's lives, the 2-year-old boy was killed shortly after 7 p.m. while he played ball in Rafah. Israel's army said forces had returned fire and knew of no casualties, while the boy's uncle said there had been no fighting in the area. Meanwhile, expectation mounted of an Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, where Israeli officials said Sunday's shooting rampage in Kibbutz Metzer - a community that symbolized Jewish-Arab coexistence - had been planned. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which are allied with Yasser Arafat's Fatah group, claimed responsibility for the kibbutz attack. Israel said it showed the insincerity of the Palestinian leader's recent condemnations of attacks on civilians, but Palestinians maintained the shooting was carried out by rogues and Arafat promised an investigation. Either way, the violence bodes ill for the mission of U.S. envoy David Satterfield, who arrived Monday to promote a plan for restarting Mideast peace negotiations and establishing a Palestinian state with provisional borders by next year. Satterfield was to meet Monday with other representatives of the so-called Quartet backing the plan - the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations. But notions of renewing peace talks seemed a world away from the daily grind of deadly violence, which two years of myriad Israeli military measures have failed to quell - and the killing of the boy in Gaza was sure to further inflame passions. Officials at Rafah Hospital officials said 2-year-old Nafez Mashal died from a bullet wound to the back. They said two other children, ages 8 and 14, were moderately wounded. The dead boy's uncle said there was no fighting going on at the time he was killed. "The boy was playing with a small ball - suddenly we came under fire," said Mohammed Mashal, the uncle. "When we looked toward the boy we found him lying on the ground in a pool of his blood." The army, which maintains an observation post on the nearby border with Egypt, said it shot in response to shooting by Palestinians and was unaware of casualties. In the past, Israeli troops responding to Palestinian gunfire and grenade attacks have hit Palestinian civilians. Earlier in the day, an angry Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz toured stricken Kibbutz Metzer, including the bedroom of Noam Ohion, 4, and brother Matam, 5, slain with their mother Revital while - neighbors said - reading a bedtime story. A weeping Avi Ohion, ex-husband of the mother and father of the boys, described how Noam would only go to sleep with one pacifier in his mouth and another in his hand. "How can a man - if you can call him a man - shoot a boy with two pacifiers and kill him? ... Three entire worlds have disappeared. They loved life so much." Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said the Israeli response will be "within the parameters" of other recent actions - seeming to rule out the expulsion of Arafat, even though the government's top decision-makers, Sharon, Mofaz and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have supported the idea. Netanyahu - who is challenging Sharon for the Likud Party leadership primary in hopes of emerging as prime minister after a scheduled January 28 general election - on Monday repeated his long-standing call for "expelling Arafat's terror regime" but said the timing should be chosen carefully. The main obstacle to Arafat's expulsion appears at the moment to be continued U.S. opposition, at a time when Washington prepares for possible war with Iraq and wants to avoid antagonizing the Arab world. A senior Israeli military official said Israel knew the shooter and his accomplices came from the West Bank town of Tulkarem, but were dispatched by militants in Nablus. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he believed Fatah decided to resume attacks in Israel and not just limit them to soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. However, Fatah distanced itself from the Metzer attack. The group said it condemns attacks on civilians and will help with the internal investigation. Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said he saw the shooting as "a crime." The gunman had crawled under Metzer's chain-link perimeter fence just before midnight Sunday - hours after a car exploded nearby, killing its two Palestinian occupants in what police believed was a failed suicide bombing. He reached the center of the community and shot the three members of the Ohion family in their house. According to kibbutz member Doron Lieber he proceeded to the communal dining room where he met a couple taking a walk, killing the woman as the man fled, and then he killed kibbutz mayor Yitzhak Dori, who had pulled up in his car, before fleeing by again crawling under the fence. The attack came on the same day that Fatah officials and the militant Hamas group launched talks in Cairo. Fatah officials have said they were going to demand that Hamas halt attacks inside Israel. Hamas says it will continue attacks. Throughout the West Bank, Israeli troops have been in or near Palestinian cities for nearly five months, having invaded after a wave of suicide bombings in Israel. http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20021112/D7N84CTO0.html
That's just...painful. This conflict needs the American public's attention, but collectively, we practically ignore it. We leave it up to the politicians, but they cannot seem to solve anything. Something must be done. I cannot fathom the parents' pain.
That's it...I'm done. I think we should just the two groups fight it out. Things have gotten worse, not better. Now that childrn are being put into the sights...I doubt we can do anything anyway.
DAMNIT I AM SO FREAKIN SICK OF THIS CRAP! INNOCENT CHILDREN ARE BEING KILLED! WHERE THE CRAP ARE THE UN FORCES? BOTH OF THESE IDIOTIC GROUPS SUCK ASS!!! I hurt so bad for the innocent people, but when innocent children are killed, it tears me up inside...I hope those bastards responsible for this burn in hell for eternity. When will this madness stop. What the hell is wrong with these people to be able to kill babies. I have a horrible feeling that this is just going to get worse now that babies are being shot. What is the solution? I don't even want to read any threads that talk about this anymore.
You are right...both sides are wrong. However, these senseless acts would have never started if it weren't for the suicide bombings. That being said, I really hope it stops soon. I cant stand reading stories like this. I have 4 kids under 6 and this really hits home.
The Problem is NJRocket, there is always some event preceding another that can be blamed as the root of another violent action. This is the concept that has perpetuated this fighting for years. I think what needs to be done is to forget the past and try to look for the future to ensure that no more children grow up in this environment of hate and go on to become members of extremist palestinian or zionist groups like Hamas or the JDL or Sharon's party.
I agree. I would like nothing more than to have the UN go into the region. Let them police the Palestinians and guard the Israeli border. The Palestinians will always have an axe to grind with the Israeli forces. Plus since it's time the UN started enforcing it's resolutions, They can start enforcing them against Israel which is in violation of quite a few. Most of all I think the UN would be able to be more impartial as peace keepers than either the Palestinians trying to curb their own terrorists, or Israelis who have their own motives with the Settlements, and use disproportionate force way too often to keep any real peace. Also Behad, I didn't post this article in that thread because that thread was about the Palestinians who killed ISraeli children, and this one was about the Israelis killing Palestinian children.
I agree. I would like nothing more than to have the UN go into the region. Let them police the Palestinians and guard the Israeli border. The Palestinians will always have an axe to grind with the Israeli forces. Plus since it's time the UN started enforcing it's resolutions, They can start enforcing them against Israel which is in violation of quite a few. I'm under the impression that Palestinians have requested UN peacekeepers before and Israel has rejected them on soverignty grounds. Anyone know if this is correct or not?
I'm not sure, but the Israelis are in violation of UN agreements, perhaps they shouldn't have the choice.
I believe so. I think their main issue is that Peacekeepers would be ineffective at controlling suicide bombers but very effective at controlling Israel's response to them.
Now, if you want to go back to what caused it, it was due to the fact the "jews" wanting to expell palestinians so they could live there
No offense Azadre, but who cares what caused it. We can point fingers all day long. The problem is everyone is looking to blame soemone for "starting it" and it becomes a game of one-upmanship to see who will finish it. Kindergarden mentality in power positions. The people who involved in making these decisions need to stop pointing fingers and figure out how to stop the killings...period.
Cohen, you, yourself have stated this belief as your own before. As you know we agree on many issues: removal of settlements, the pre 1967 borders or close to it and Sharon and Netanyahu, I assume, make the problem worse. When are you going to assert more than "I share the pain of both sides"? Let's also leave aside how many angels on the head of a pin type arguments on whether suicide bombers are worse than a calculated decision to bomb an entire apartment complex of innocents to get one Hamas guy etc. Why aren't you willing to take any chances or propose any concrete steps for peace? Don't you realize that in a way never proposing any action except a complete cessation of violence by the Palestinians, leaves all the power in a few crazy suicide bombers and allows the Sharon types to continue their plan to permanently annex the West Bank and Gaza. Remember when Israelis talked of beginning negotiations if there were 10 days without violence. You never hear about thqat anymore. I am starting to think that the day of the two state solution may have passed and that Israel will be forced with a decision to either join the family of modern democratic states that don't discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity or go for the "final solution" and expel the Palestinians by force. Many Israelis have given up on the two state idea, want forceful expulsion. I'm seeing that more Palestinians are abandoning the two state idea ,as the settlments continue and the type of non-viable state still supported by many Israelis keeps shrinking and getting more broken up.
Actually, it was the "towel heads" and "camel jockeys" that decided to blow up innocent people in malls, restaurants, catering halls, pizza parlors etc. that started it.
New leadership, on both sides, is needed before any progress will be made. Just like in US politics, there is too much pandering to the extremists on both sides and not enough thought about the vast majority in the middle. I wish Yitzhak Rabin were still alive.
All Azadre said was his opinion that the Jews migrating to Israel and throwing people off of their land is causing the violence. That is his opinion and his right to say so. I don't know the need for the quotation marks though. BUT, that sure as hell does not give you right to start yelling racial slurs because of your ignorance. I think you would be insulted if someone called you, being Jewish, a "kike" or a "shilock", so why don't you keep the insults to a minimum and state only your political beliefs before you get yourself in trouble. Insulting attitudes such as yours is why there is no peace in the middle east.
