VARIOUS: PALESTINIAN SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS HIMSELF UP SHORTLY AFTER START OF WORK ON CONTROVERSIAL FENCE BETWEEN TERRITORIES

Record ID: 640656

  • Title: VARIOUS: PALESTINIAN SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS HIMSELF UP SHORTLY AFTER START OF WORK ON CONTROVERSIAL FENCE BETWEEN TERRITORIES
  • Date: 18th June 2002
  • Summary: (U3) NEAR KIBBUTZ MAGAL, NORTHERN ISRAEL (JUNE 17, 2002) (REUTERS) SLV ISRAELI SECURITY FORCES AT SITE WHERE SUICIDE BOMBER KILLED HIMSELF ON BORDER WITH ISRAEL MV AFTERMATH AND DEBRIS/ SECURITY FORCES AT SITE/ SLV CORDONED OFF AREA (5 SHOTS) (U3) JENIN, WEST BANK (JUNE 16, 2002) (REUTERS) SLV/HAS NIGHT VIEWS TANKS AND MILITARY VEHICLES MOVING THROUGH CITY (5 SHOTS) MV RESIDENTS SHUTTING UP SHOPS; MILITARY VEHICLES MOVING THROUGH STREET; RESIDENTS RUNNING (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 3rd July 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEAR KIBBUTZ MAGAL, NORTHERN ISRAEL/ JERUSALEM/ RAMALLAH AND JENIN, WEST BANK/ GAZA
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA33PIXLLNG2PI33UHBLT2M4ZO7
  • Story Text: A Palestinian suicide bomber has blown himself up on Israel's frontier with the West Bank, shortly after Israel angered the Palestinians by starting work on a security fence between the two territories. The explosion killed only the bomber.
    Israel says the security barrier is meant to keep out suicide bombers.
    A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up near an Israeli border police unit on Monday (June 17) on Israel's porous frontier with the West Bank, killing only himself.
    "A border patrol unit saw a suspicious person and they called to him to stop. There was an explosion, he was apparently a suicide bomber," a border police spokeswoman said.
    She said there were no Israeli casualties.
    The incident occurred on Israel's frontier with the West Bank, north of the Palestinian city of Tulkarm.
    Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the man was one of five would-be suicide bombers being sought by security forces.
    An Israeli armoured column rolled through the West Bank town of Jenin after dark on Sunday (June 16), exchanging fire with local gunmen before leaving.
    The army described the move as a "routine patrol", but many Palestinians view these forays as a preamble to Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian areas.
    Israel has begun a process of creating a physical barrier between itself and the Palestinians of the West Bank while pushing off any discussion of Palestinian statehood on that land.
    In the northern West Bank, bulldozers have been at work near the Israeli army's Salem checkpoint, levelling the ground for the first section of a 110-km (70-mile) fence aimed at stopping Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israel.
    Israel says the security fence, inaugurated on Sunday, is intended purely to prevent such attacks and will roughly follow the "Green Line" marking the border before Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War.
    "For more than a year and a half Israel has been coping with murderous terrorism that does not fear murdering innocents -- women, children and old people -- and with a complex diplomatic campaign", Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told a Likud party congress.
    He said it was too early to talk about Palestinian statehood on the West Bank side of the line. In the past he has said that such statehood should be the product of long-term peacemaking, after Palestinians cease their uprising and overhaul their governing Palestinian Authority.
    Sharon's remarks appeared to caution U.S. President George W. Bush against siding with a proposal to declare a provisional Palestinian state as part of a vision of Middle East peace which Bush is expected to unveil this week.
    In Gaza Israeli army bulldozers continued destroying factories shelled earlier. The army claims the buildings were being used to make bombs and house ammunition intended for use in attacks against Israelis.
    Palestinian officials have condemned the latest developments, accusing Israel of trying to start "a new apartheid system" with the fence which, along with Israeli military checkpoints, carves up the West Bank and isolates Palestinian cities and towns.
    Arafat has promised legislative and presidential elections in December or January, but says that carrying out reforms and cracking down on militants is complicated by the Israeli military blockades and frequent army raids in the West Bank.
    Some Israeli right-wing leaders have also opposed the fence, as a return to the pre-war 1967 borders that weakens their claims to West Bank lands which they believe are a biblical birthright.
    Dozens of right wing Israelis on Monday demonstrated in Jerusalem against its construction and demanded expulsion of all Arabs from the land.
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