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| Deadly Cross-Border Attacks on Gaza-Israel Border | |
| (about 4 hours later) | |
| JERUSALEM — An Israeli laborer who was repairing the security fence along the border with Gaza was fatally shot on Tuesday by a Palestinian sniper, according to the Israeli military, and Israel immediately responded with airstrikes, tank and infantry fire against targets it associated with militant groups in the Palestinian coastal territory. | |
| A Palestinian girl, Hala Abu Sbeikha, 3, was killed and at least four of her relatives were wounded when a shell landed in front of their home in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central part of Gaza, according to local hospital officials. | |
| The deaths were the latest in a growing wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence that is accompanying the difficult, American-brokered peace talks now underway. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had warned that the killing of the laborer would not go unanswered and that Israel would “respond with force.” He spoke during a visit earlier Tuesday to Sderot, the Israeli town about a mile from the Gaza border that has been subjected to Palestinian rocket fire for years. | |
| Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said, “If there is no quiet in Israel, there will be no quiet in Gaza.” | |
| No group immediately claimed responsibility for the killing of the Israeli laborer, but anticipating Israeli retaliation, Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, evacuated its security facilities. Islam Shahwan, the spokesman for the Hamas government’s Interior Ministry, praised the killing, calling it a “heroic operation.” | |
| Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, condemned the Israeli strikes as aggression against the Palestinian people. | Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, condemned the Israeli strikes as aggression against the Palestinian people. |
| In November 2012 Israel launched a military offensive against the militant groups in Gaza that led to eight days of intense cross-border fighting, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. | In November 2012 Israel launched a military offensive against the militant groups in Gaza that led to eight days of intense cross-border fighting, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. |
| Among the targets of Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Tuesday were a weapon-manufacturing facility and a concealed rocket launcher, the military said in a statement. Israeli analysts said that a strong response from Hamas could lead to further escalation but that given Hamas’s current weakness, there was also a chance that calm would quickly be restored. | |
| The recent increase in violence, involving both the West Bank and the Israel-Gaza frontier, has prompted talk of the possibility of a third Palestinian uprising, especially if the peace talks, scheduled to continue until late April, end in failure. | |
| Israel is negotiating with the West Bank-based mainstream Palestinian leadership headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, who wants to establish an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to exist, opposes the peace talks. | |
| The Israeli killed on Tuesday, Salah Abu Latif, 22, was a civilian contractor working for the Israeli Defense Ministry. A Bedouin from the southern Israeli town of Rahat, he was the first Israeli fatality in the vicinity of Gaza since the November 2012 fighting. | |
| His death came a day after an Israeli police officer was stabbed and wounded at a West Bank junction. On Sunday, a bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, minutes after passengers spotted the bomb and exited the bus, preventing casualties. The police said they were working on the assumption that the bomb had been an attempted terrorist attack by suspected Palestinian militants. | |
| In addition, three Israeli soldiers and a retired colonel have been killed in recent months by Palestinians from the West Bank. | In addition, three Israeli soldiers and a retired colonel have been killed in recent months by Palestinians from the West Bank. |
| More than 20 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces this year, many of them during arrest raids carried out by Israel in West Bank refugee camps where Israeli forces have encountered increasing resistance. On Friday, Israeli forces fatally shot a Palestinian man who approached the border fence separating Gaza from Israel. The Israeli military said there had been disturbances along the fence. | |
| Mr. Yaalon, the Israeli defense minister, said the Palestinian attackers had been “influenced by the atmosphere of incitement and hatred against Israel that dominates the Palestinian Authority.” | |
| Israeli and Palestinian analysts said that the violence so far appeared to be a series of unrelated events and did not yet point to a new, systematic Palestinian intifada, or uprising. | |
| Yoram Schweitzer, an Israeli expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and a former intelligence official, said several elements contributed to an atmosphere that provided a backdrop for Palestinian attacks, including the killings of Palestinians by the Israeli military, continued Israeli settlement activity and a popular sense that nothing would come of the negotiations. | |
| Some of the attacks seemed to be the spontaneous acts of individuals while others may have been more organized, Mr. Schweitzer said. The failure of the negotiations could stir further violence, he speculated, as could efforts to derail the talks by groups that oppose them. | |
| Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst and a former spokesman for the Palestinian government based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said that the rise in violence reflected growing Palestinian frustration both with what he called Israeli aggression and the stagnant internal Palestinian political situation. | |
| “Many people thought there would be an improvement in the Palestinian economy with the resumption of the peace process,” he said, “but nothing materialized.” | |
| Mr. Khatib added that the dynamic between Israel and Gaza was different. Attacks emanating from Hamas-run Gaza are generally more orchestrated, he said, though he said caution that Hamas had largely honored the cease-fire, and that it was premature to draw conclusions from the cross-border killings on Tuesday. | |
Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza. | Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza. |