More violence in Gaza

As the Bush administration comes out in favor of a Palestinian state, more violence in the region keeps the Israelis and Palestinians apart.

By Flore de Préneuf

Oct 4, 2001 | The same day President Bush, for the very first time, insisted that the establishment of a Palestinian state was central to U.S. plans for Middle East peace, two young Israelis were killed and 15 injured when Palestinian gunmen armed with assault rifles and hand grenades infiltrated Elei Sinai, a small Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip by the Mediterranean Sea.

And at dawn Wednesday, exactly a week after Israel and the Palestinians sat down to sign a cease-fire, Israeli bulldozers and tanks penetrated Palestinian territory in a retaliatory raid on Palestinian positions and a police station that left at least six Palestinians dead.

The numbers are depressing, the routine violence numbing: At least 28 people have died since last week's cease-fire, the sixth broken truce in a year. The attack in Elei Sinai, the first of its kind on a Gaza Jewish settlement, buried hopes that Israelis and Palestinians would find their way back to the negotiating table in the near future despite a recent push by the United States to ease tensions in the Middle East.

Earlier Tuesday President Bush had encouraging words for the Palestinian people, whose attempts to secure a national homeland, through futile wars and failed negotiations, have never been successful. Responding to journalists after the New York Times reported that the United States had been ready to unveil an ambitious diplomatic initiative to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Bush said "the idea of a Palestinian state has always been part of a vision, as long as the right of Israel to exist is respected."

The statement was greeted enthusiastically by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and by other leaders of the Arab world, whose support the United States is courting. But it failed to stir up high hopes on the ground. "Recognition of a Palestinian state was already part of Clinton's ideas after Camp David," noted Ghassan Khatib, head of the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, a Palestinian think tank. "Are we supposed to be happy with the same thing twice? It's a positive thing from a political point of view but until Americans make a concrete move, it's just a repetition of something the previous president said."

While Bush's backing of a Palestinian state may not have had an effect on the street in Gaza, it clearly had repercussions inside Sharon's government. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Bush's move could "backfire" Tuesday, a sentiment echoed by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Zalman Shoval

Shoval said it was "probably not wrong" to interpret Bush's endorsement of a Palestinian state as part of the U.S. effort to bring moderate Arab and Muslim states to its latest international coalition, but warned that the United States may be sending a message that terrorism works. "Quite logically, the Palestinians could say 'Thank you bin Laden,'" he told Agence France-Presse.

Meanwhile, Israeli analysts are already predicting that Tuesday's attack on the Elei Sinai settlement by terrorists affiliated with Hamas, a militant Islamic group, will serve as a model for future operations. Gaza's 16 settlements are tempting targets: some 6,500 Israelis live there in comfortable homes, surrounded by agricultural fields and well-watered lawns, while 1.1 million Palestinians live, mostly in squalor, in the rest of the 147-square-mile Gaza Strip. (Israeli settlements, which occupy more than a fifth of the land, also use the lion's share of the water in the dusty, overcrowded strip.) Because settlements are also frequently home to military outposts that are there to protect settlers, many Palestinians view attacks on settlements as legitimate acts of war.

Next Page: Arafat's political weakness

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