4 Die in Israeli Raid on Ramallah

Four people, including a 9-year-old boy, were reported killed when Israeli troops raided the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, prompting angry denunciations from Palestinian officials on a day when backers of an unofficial peace treaty were gathering in Geneva for a celebrity-laden signing ceremony.

A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat called the daylong military operation, in which Israeli commandos rounded up more than 30 suspected militants, a “provocative action.”

Others warned it might undermine efforts planned for this week to forge a cease-fire among Palestinian militant groups. Representatives of the factions were to have begun meeting in Cairo today, but the talks were postponed until Thursday. The reasons for the delay were not clear.

Israeli military officials defended the Ramallah raid, which targeted suspected members of the group Hamas. Officials said armed militants in the city were responsible for a series of suicide bombings in Israel that had killed 68 civilians and wounded more than 550 others in recent years.

“The timing has only to do with ensuring [the safety of] Israeli citizens inside Israel,” a military spokesman said. “When you have a ticking bomb, you have to dismantle it.”

Defense officials said the raid uncovered three caches of ordnance, including a fully armed explosives belt of the kind used by suicide bombers. Among the weapons found were booby-trapped basketballs, according to Israeli media reports.

Israeli commandos killed two suspected Hamas members who fired on troops from a multistory building, defense officials said. A third man was slain in an exchange of gunfire at another building, whose residents were ordered to evacuate after troops were shot at, the military said. The building was later demolished.

The boy died in a Ramallah hospital after being struck by a bullet during a clash between Israeli forces and rock-throwing youths near a refugee camp at the entrance to the city, Palestinian emergency workers and doctors said. The standoff briefly shut down the main avenue into the city, which is just north of Jerusalem.

Arafat’s compound was not targeted in the operation, Israeli officials said.

Palestinian officials questioned the timing of the raid, which coincided with the signing of the so-called Geneva Accord, a symbolic blueprint for peace negotiated by Israeli opposition figures and Palestinian negotiators under Swiss auspices.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, called the raid “absolutely uncalled for.” He added, “All I urge is that the Israeli government stop ... these unilateral steps, and give dialogue and peace the chance it deserves.”

Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas political figure in Gaza City, decried the military action but said the group did not plan to pull out of the militant groups’ Cairo talks. A leader of the group Islamic Jihad, also speaking in Gaza, said he did not view this as the right time for the groups to consider a unilateral cease-fire.

The latest violence comes amid preparations for a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Korei. The Palestinian leader has sought to link such talks to assurances that they will produce results on matters such as the security barrier Israel is erecting in and around the West Bank and the dismantling of outposts built as extensions of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories. Sharon has refused to agree to prior conditions.

Tensions over Jewish construction continued Monday when Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem for the second day blocked bulldozers that had arrived to begin work on a new Israeli neighborhood.

The signing ceremony in Geneva, where actor Richard Dreyfuss was host, drew delegations of Israeli and Palestinian officials, writers and artists, as well as Nobel laureates such as former President Carter. Although the document has no official authority, supporters sought to turn the event into a global spectacle in hopes of overcoming what promises to be an uphill climb for wide acceptance.

“There remains one basic choice for the Israelis,” Carter said during the ceremony. “Do we want permanent peace with all our neighbors, or do we want to retain our settlements throughout the occupied territories? And it is of equal importance that the Palestinians renounce violence against Israeli citizens in exchange for the commitment to this Geneva initiative.”

The accord would draw two states largely along the lines in place before the 1967 Middle East War, with Palestinians getting nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel would get the rest and Jerusalem would be shared by the two. The proposal was mailed to every home in Israel and has been hotly debated.

A poll published Monday in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper found that 38% of respondents were opposed to the accord, 31% were in favor of it and the rest had no opinion or were unfamiliar with it.