JERUSALEM, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A series of hostilities plagued Israel and the Palestinian Authority Wednesday, the day after an aircraft, reportedly a drone, fired at a jeep in Gaza Strip killing two militants. It was Israel's third targeted killing in a week.
Soldiers arrested a prominent Hamas activist in the West Bank on Wednesday night, and at 3 a.m. a gunman opened automatic fire and in a long burst from his AK-47 killed one of the soldiers.
At 5:30 a.m. Palestinians fired a Qassam rocket at an Israeli village north of the Gaza Strip. They missed, but after sunset two mortar bombs hit the village, Netiv Haasara, slightly wounding a civilian. Israeli cannons returned fire.
Is the truce the Palestinians declared, dead?
The Commander of Israel's division in the West Bank, Brig. Gen. Ya'ir Golan, confirmed violence has escalated. "That's for sure. We can see a clear escalation since last August," he told reporters.
Twenty-one Palestinians were killed last month, not including the suicide bomber who blew himself up in a market in Hadera, halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Some of the Palestinian dead were Islamic Jihad militants whom Israel targeted in Gaza, some were armed militants killed in gun battles while trying to stab a soldier or hurl a firebomb. Others were killed trying to cross the fence into Israel, and five happened to be near the militants targeted by Israel.
Palestinian militants last month killed eight Israelis in two attacks: the Hadera suicide bombing and a drive-by shooting at a hitchhiking stop near Gush Etzion in the West Bank.
The Islamic Jihad sent the suicide bomber. A Fatah group accepted responsibility for the drive-by shooting, but Golan told reporters he was absolutely sure neither Fatah's Tanzim nor al-Aksa Brigades launched the attack. He was "99 percent" sure Hamas did it, even though it has not accepted responsibility.
Much of the fighting in the northern West Bank in recent months pitted Israel against an Islamic Jihad cell that was responsible for suicide bombing attacks in Tel Aviv and Netania in February and in July, and last week's attack in Hadera prompted harsher action.
Golan said that in the past week "We killed two of the most prominent figures in this terrorist net.... We captured a few other suspects.
"We harmed this terrorist cell quite significantly but this is not the end." He believed the Islamic Jihad has about a dozen cells.
Some Hamas and Fatah members are "Not engaged in (terrorist) activity now, but there are others whom we can say, for sure, that are engaged in terrorist activity.
"In any case, we see in all the organizations processes of building the infrastructure, with weapons, organization so that if this truce ends we will face ... an operational challenge," Golan said.
The current truce is slated to expire at the end of this year.
The Israeli strikes and arrests are partly designed to crush the militants, hence the targeted killings; to deter them, partly by shelling areas from which they launch rockets; but also to force the Palestinian Authority's security services to clamp down on the gunmen.
"The Palestinians are not taking any tangible steps to either fight terrorism or disband its infrastructures," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon complained Tuesday at a meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini.
Fini said he hoped Sharon would soon meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and discuss the issues but Sharon was adamant -- a meeting will take place only when the Palestinians engage in "a vigorous war against terrorism. At the moment, this is not happening," Sharon's spokesman reported.
At a meeting with government and Jewish Agency officials, Wednesday, he complained that Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen "Signed an agreement with the terrorist organizations, according to which they will participate in the elections, will not be disarmed and the organizations themselves will not be disbanded but will remain intact ... While the security situation is currently better than it was, there are still terrorist attacks," he said.
A vicious cycle has erupted. Clashes in the West Bank prompted Palestinian reprisals from the Gaza Strip in an apparent attempt to deter Israel.
The Palestinians have not been very effective and their Interior Ministry's spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khousa noted that most of the 17 or 18 rockets fired towards Israel last week landed in the Gaza Strip.
The Israelis maintain that since they withdrew from Gaza there is no reason to continue attacks from there. "We will not accept a situation of even half a Qassam fired from Gaza to Israel," an authoritative source in the Southern Command told United Press International.
Thus Israel has responded vigorously to attacks from Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority is trying to stop the fighting and the presidency's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina, demanded the international community stop "all Israeli aggression," The Jerusalem Times press service reported.
The Higher Follow-up Committee for the Palestinian Factions has reiterated its agreement to stop armed attacks, the Palestinian State Information Service said.
However, with the chaos and lawlessness in Palestinian territories it seemed difficult to enforce such an agreement.
The Palestinian factions had agreed to stop launching rockets against Israel, the Secretary General of the Follow-up Committee, Ibrahim Abu El-Naja, said.
Nevertheless, such attacks continued.
Some Fatah militants reportedly sided up with the Islamic Jihad and Hamas to continue attacks. Fatah's Hassan al-Madhun, whom the Israelis targeted Tuesday, commanded a small group that fired Qassam rockets, Abu Khousa told UPI.
The death of Hamas' Fayez Abu al-Qaraa, who had been in the jeep with al-Madhun, aroused fears that that movement would retaliate. The tahadiya could be in real danger.
"This is an open war," Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said, according to the Jerusalem Times. "They (the Israelis) are going to pay a heavy price for their crimes."
Israeli spokesman were quick to note they had not realized al-Madhun was also in the jeep. He was not the target, they stressed.
Independent Israeli analysts suggested Hamas might hold its fire for the time being.
Israel has been deterring it in the Gaza Strip and Hamas would probably prefer to avoid hostilities that would disrupt Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that begins Thursday, the analysts said.
Hamas is planning to participate in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections and would not want to estrange voters, most of whom want to continue the ceasefire.
Haaretz, the Israeli daily, said Hamas must also take into account Syria's situation. Hamas' headquarters are in Damascus despite President Bashar Assad's promises, the newspaper noted.
However the Islamic Jihad has been bent on fighting Israel and one of its prominent leaders, Khaled el-Batesh, said they must "respond against the maniac acts of the Israeli occupation."
The Israeli attacks "will open the gates of hell on the enemy," the Islamic Jihad added.
Sharon, at the opening of the Knesset's winter session in Jerusalem Monday, insisted "Palestinians must realize that only a determined struggle against terror, including the dismantling of its organizations, will ensure the tranquility we all long for." Accordingly, an authoritative military source told UPI: "We intend to continue hitting terror wherever it is... Arrests will not stop until the (Palestinian) Authority takes care of affairs."
Last month Israel arrested 284 "terror activists" in the West Bank, the army spokesman's office said.
