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Palestinian Arabs

Arabs kill 19 of their own


By Stan Goodenough
November 08, 2006

Kassam-firing ?Palestinian? terrorists Wednesday paid in the blood of their fellow Arabs for their unrelenting missile fire at Jewish targets in the south of Israel.

Nineteen Arabs ? most members of an extended family, and among them seven children and four women ? were killed in the early morning hours in the northern Gaza town of Bet Hanoun ? apparently by off-course IDF shelling.

The artillery response came a day after Kassam rockets fired from the Bet Hanoun area hit a school in Ashkelon and slammed into the center of the Negev town of S?derot. Israel?s forces were targeting Kassam launching sites.

Meanwhile, eight more Kassam rockets came flying out of the Gaza Strip immediately following the shelling.

Israel?s military leadership responded quickly to news of the mis-directed firing, ordering an immediate cessation of artillery responses to rocket attacks and launching an investigation into whether the cause of the deaths was human or technical error on the part of an artillery crew and weapon.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni expressed Israel?s regret at the Arab deaths, and stressed that, unlike the Arabs in areas under supposed Palestinian Authority control, Israel never sought to harm civilians.

But PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas ? who has done nothing to try and stop the Kassam rocket attacks on Jews ? screamed that Israel was guilty of massacring innocents.

From his haven in Damascus, Syria, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal vowed that Israelis would soon feel the fury of the "Palestinians."

Their accusations resonated with European officials.

Italy?s pro-Palestinian foreign minister, Massimo D?Alema, agreed that Israel had carried out a ?massacre,? and called for urgent international intervention to end the violence.

EU external relations chief Benita Ferrero-Waldner said Israel had killed ?innocents? in ?profoundly shocking? way.

By contrast to its reactions Wednesday, the EU has failed to call for an end to the daily rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, and has not insisted that the PA use its forces to clamp down on Kassam firing.

Turkey inferred that the accidental killings had been intentional, accusing Israel of carrying out ?devastating and disproportionate? attacks on the ?Palestinian? terrorists.

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