Israeli president seeks inquiry into ‘trigger-happy’ army after killings

ISRAELI forces killed 11 Palestinians over the weekend, including two children in a helicopter raid, which led Israel’s president yesterday to call for an investigation into whether the army was “trigger-happy.”

The violence also appeared to cloud prospects for the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian security talks on initial steps toward a truce in nearly two years of bloodshed. In what Palestinians described as the killing of innocent quarry workers, Israeli soldiers outside the West Bank city of Hebron shot dead four Palestinians yesterday.

An army spokesman said soldiers opened fire at the men after they had broken into a fenced-in agricultural area run by Jewish settlers, fearing a potential attack. The army said the men were carrying axes, clubs and wirecutters. Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers entered Jenin refugee camp and killed Abdel-Kareem al-Saadeh after gunmen fired at them, Palestinian sources said. The Islamic

Jihad group said the youth was one of their fighters. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat blasted Israel for the latest killings and accused its government of a deliberate policy to derail fragile efforts at a ceasefire.

"What happened is not a massacre, but massacres, with an Israeli decision from the highest military and political levels to end the peace process," Mr Arafat told reporters. Israeli President Moshe Katzav, a former right-wing Likud party lawmaker who now holds a largely ceremonial position, said during a visit to an Israeli Arab school that it was imperative the army examine its tactics following two strikes in the last week which killed several Palestinian civilians.

"The claim as to whether the (army) was trigger-happy must be examined," he said. "If the army reaches the conclusion that this was the case, it will decide what to do but it would be hasty to draw conclusions now."

A helicopter assault in the West Bank village of Tubas on Saturday had already rekindled debate within Israel on the tactics that its government calls a policy of self-defence against Palestinian militants.

A missile fired by one of the helicopters destroyed a car carrying a militant, killing him and two 15-year-old youths travelling with him. A second missile hit a nearby house, killing a boy, nine, and a girl, 10, and wounding seven others.

Israeli officials expressed regret at the death of the two children. Earlier in the week, an Israeli tank shell killed four members of a Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip. On July 23, nine children were among the dead in an air raid that killed a top Hamas militant, his deputy and 14 other Palestinians in Gaza City. Israeli officials called the civilian deaths a mistake.

"The defence minister must examine whether the series of mishaps and apologies really stems from mistakes and not from a change in policy ... which makes it easier to press the trigger," Haim Ramon, a senior legislator in Ben-Eliezer's Labour Party, told Israel Radio.

At least 1,529 Palestinians and 589 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 after peace talks froze.