Palestinian Officer Slain as Israel Blames Arafat for Suicide Blasts

JERUSALEM —  A plainclothes Palestinian police officer was shot dead during riots against Israeli soldiers near the West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday, as Israel held Yasser Arafat responsible for two botched suicide bombings earlier in the day.

The police officer, 22-year-old Haitham Mansour, was the second fatality in nearly two weeks of street clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli forces following Israel’s groundbreaking for a new Jewish neighborhood in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

Palestinian officials said the officer, who worked in a narcotics unit of the Nablus police department, was engaged in surveillance during the protests. Israeli media, however, reported that he was one of the nearly 1,000 protesters hurling rocks at about 200 troops at the edge of the Palestinian self-rule enclave.

The soldiers and Israeli police fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas and eventually shot live ammunition “into the air,” according to an Israel Defense Forces statement. Mansour was shot in the head.

The shooting capped a day of heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians that began in the early morning with the explosions involving two suicide bombers outside Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The bombers missed their apparent targets--Israeli children on their way to school and their parents leaving for work--but seven Palestinians were wounded in the blasts.

The militant Muslim group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombings in an anonymous telephone call to the Arabic-language division of the Israeli radio station Kol Yisrael on Tuesday night. The caller identified the two bombers and asserted that they had belonged to a new cell called “Jabal Abu Ghneim,” the Arabic name for the hill in southeastern Jerusalem were Israel is building the new settlement it calls Har Homa.

The claim could not be independently verified, but Islamic Jihad orchestrated similar coordinated suicide bombings in the Gaza Strip in November 1995 after the group’s leader, Fathi Shikaki, was assassinated on the island of Malta. Israeli agents were widely believed to have been responsible for the killing.

Israel Radio reported early today that Palestinian police had arrested 15 alleged Islamic Jihad militants in the Gaza Strip since Tuesday’s bombings.

Earlier, a caller to Israel Radio claimed responsibility in the name of the Islamic extremist group Hamas, which carried out a March 21 suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv cafe. But Hamas’ military wing, Iziddin al-Qassam, issued a denial. It blamed Israeli intelligence forces for the attacks and vowed to retaliate in Tel Aviv.

Tuesday’s suicide bombers were Gaza residents who wore Palestinian police uniforms, apparently to pass by Israeli patrols on the road to the Jewish settlements. Although neither bomber apparently was a police officer, the fact that they launched their attacks from Palestinian-ruled territory increased the political pressure on Palestinian Authority President Arafat to crack down on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad infrastructure.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged that the bombings demonstrated that the Palestinian Authority is not fighting terrorism--an Israeli condition for the resumption of peace talks.

“These attacks are proof the color of the light has not changed yet and the terror organizations still see a green light for action,” Netanyahu said. “The Palestinian Authority has not yet taken the necessary steps and has not yet fulfilled the commitments it made to us and to the Americans to fight terrorism.”

Arafat dismissed the accusations and said Israel’s prolonged security closure of the Palestinian areas has created the climate for the militants.

“The closure is the best platform for fanaticism and crime,” he said.

Palestinian Authority officials accused Israel of having orchestrated the twin bombings, and an official statement charged that Israeli soldiers tossed the second explosive from a military vehicle. Arafat told representatives of donor countries a similar story at a meeting in Gaza. But Palestinian police investigators at the scene confirmed that there had been two suicide bombers in uniform.

Despite the mutual accusations, however, a U.S. official said the two sides had resumed high-level security contacts after the bombings. The Palestinian Authority cut off security cooperation with Israel after Netanyahu announced he was freezing political negotiations in the wake of the Tel Aviv bombing.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, meanwhile, officials said another fatal shooting of a Palestinian by Israeli soldiers was unrelated to political clashes. The victim, identified as 21-year-old Kamel Sidki Zaro, reportedly was shot by soldiers while trying to steal a car with friends near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Times researcher Fayed Abu Shammalah contributed to this report from the Gaza Strip.