Palestinians carried the body of Ghassan Abu Sharach in the West Bank City of Nablus on Saturday. Israeli soldiers shot and killed six Palestinians in two incidents.

 

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military killed six Palestinians on Saturday, three in the West Bank whom it accused of killing a Jewish settler and three in Gaza who it said were crawling along the border wall planning an attack. It was the deadliest day in the conflict in nearly a year.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, called it “a sad day for Palestinians and their National Authority” and condemned the West Bank operation as an “assassination” and “an attempt to target the state of security and stability that the Palestinian Authority has been able to achieve.”

Maj. Peter Lerner, spokesman for Israel’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank, said that its forces had spent the past two days looking for the killers of the settler, Rabbi Meir Hai, a 45-year-old teacher and father of seven, who was shot dead on Thursday as he drove near his home in the settlement of Shavei Shomron.

The information gathered, he said, led them to three men in the city of Nablus early Saturday. Troops in jeeps descended on their homes and in each case, he said, the suspect was asked to give himself up. None did so, and all were shot dead.

All three, he added, had been involved in anti-Israel violence in the past through activities in the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a militia associated with the Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. One of them, Annan Sleiman Moustafa Tsubakh, 36, was hiding with two assault rifles, two handguns and ammunition in a crawl space in his house when the Israeli troops found him.

More . . .

"

====================

It is really sad to hear of these deaths and standoffs.  The Israel-Palestinian situation has become a truly intractable conflict.

Even the poorest of Palestinians are so offended at this stage that any move by Israel, the power center, is not embraced easily.  That is the nature of such conflicts.

Regardless of how the situation developed, Israel may need to do some real "soul-searching" to see if the conflict is worth it.  Israel has lost face in the international sphere because of this conflict; people have made up their mind about the hardline that Israel has taken.  The cry of Palestinian children haunts us as they have managed to communicate their pain to the world quite well.

Breaking such a vicious cycle requires major overtures to extend trust and do some serious repair work.

I really miss Peter Jennings analysis on the situation. He would have had some solid recommendations.