Burying The Youngest Victims
There were wails of sorrow and cries for revenge Sunday, in Hebron and Ramallah, as children killed in the ongoing clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians were mourned and buried.
Terrible as the grief was, it did not mark a new development in the battles between Israel and the Palestinians, a cycle of violence now in its seventh month.
At least 367 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 69 other Israelis have died in violence since last fall. CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins reports that of the Palestinians that have been killed, nearly a third were under the age of 18, while 4 of the Israelis who died were children.
In Hebron, Jewish settlers and supporters talked of vengeance as they buried 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas, who was killed by sniper fire a week ago as she sat in her stroller in front of her family's home.
In Ramallah, vows of retaliation were also heard - at the funeral procession for an 11-year-old Palestinian boy who was wounded in a March 15 clash with Israeli troops and died of his injuries two weeks later.
Security was tight in Hebron as around 1,000 mourners marched from the tomb of the biblical patriarchs with the small body of Shalhevet Pas wrapped in a piece of blue velvet bearing an embroidered Star of David. They buried her at a cemetery where residents say gravestones go back more than 400 years.
"Never before have we had to accompany (to her grave) a little girl less than a year old who fell in war in this holy place," said settler Rabbi Dov Lior.
"The government of Israel has a duty to avenge her blood and the blood of every one of us and her brothers whose blood was shed by evildoers," he said at the funeral.
A rabbi swayed in prayer over the baby's body as her father, Yitzhak, injured in the attack on March 26, watched from a wheelchair. Witnesses said settlers threw stones at Palestinians during the funeral procession.
 AP Palestinians carry the flag of the militant group Hamas as they march in the funeral procession of 11-year-old Mohammed Tamini, who was wounded in a March 15 clash with Israeli troops. |
At Tamimi's funeral later in the day, a leader of Arafat's Fatah faction said the uprising would continue.
"The Palestinian policy is very clear - to continue the Intifada, to continue the resistance," Marwan Barghouthi said.
Hours later, fresh violence flared as Israeli soldiers traded fire with Palestinian gunmen on Mount Gerizim near the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesse said.
An army spokesman said troops traded fire with Palestinians near Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and that Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the Jewish settlement in Hebron.
No casualties were reported in any of the incidents.
Speaking after two of the bloodiest days of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations in weeks, Israeli lawmaker Yitzhak Levy of the pro-settlement National Religious Party sounded a rare note of doubt over the future of Hebron's Jews.
"There are two possibilities - either to evacuate the settlement or strengthen the settlement there, and I say this with great pain because we have reached the decisive moment," he said of the 400 militant Jews who live amongst 120,000 Palestinians in the city sacred to Jews and Muslims.
"The prime minister must decide. It's impossible to skip over this decision. It's impossible to leave Jews under a shower of shots, when bullets penetrate their homes every day...The Jewish community in Hebron is in the greatest danger."
Settlers had said they would not bury Pas until Israeli forces seized the Palestinian-populated hill where the gunfire had originated. But they went ahead with the funeral to give the family the usual seven-day Jewish mourning period before the Passover holiday begins next weekend.
In Gaza, Palestinian preventive security chief Mohammed Dahlan condemned Israel's overnight capture of five members of the Force-17 Palestinian security unit and one civilian as a "new escalation" of the conflict.
Dahlan appealed to Israel to return the five Force-17 men and the civilian. Palestinian officials said they were taken by Israeli troops from Jaljilya, a self-ruled West Bank village. Dahlan warned Israel that it had "to be responsible for the outcome of any Palestinian reaction."
Force 17 is one of several Palestinian security organs.
"All of the systems of the Palestinian Authority are contaminated by terror," Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz told Israel's Channel Two television.
Israel's far-right Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi urged the government to destroy Arafat's home, saying the action would force the Palestinian president to reconsider whether to go on fighting Israel.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon brushed aside the appeal by Zeevi, who made clear Arafat should be warned beforehand.
Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres left on Sunday for a four-day visit to Sweden, Norway, France and Greece for meetings with European leaders.
Nawaf Souf, head of the Palestinian civilian liaison office near Nablus, said Israeli military bulldozers were uprooting 350 olive trees as part of a policy of land confiscation to create a security belt around a road used by settlers.
Israeli officials said the army had demolished four buildings built without a permit and uprooted 30 trees near Tulkarm in the West Bank. They said all were near where attacks had been launched against Israelis.
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