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Gaza ceasefire in jeopardy as six Palestinians are shot
Apparently it's not in jeopardy when Paleos rocket the Israelis, but then, this is the Guardian and you already knew that.
Israeli troops yesterday shot dead six Palestinians in two separate incidents, as evidence emerged that an increasingly fragile ceasefire between armed groups loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and Israel appeared to be in danger of breaking down.

The shootings, the most serious violence in months, came a day before today's first anniversary of the outbreak of Israel's war against Gaza in which almost 1,400 Palestinians died – and as allegations have emerged from Israeli human rights campaigners who opposed the war that they are facing concerted attempts to silence them.

Three of the Palestinians were killed in an airstrike just inside the Gaza border. According to Israeli officials they had been scouting the area for a possible infiltration operation, but according to Hamas officials and medics they had been searching for scrap metal to salvage.

More serious in its implications, however, was the shooting dead of three members of Fatah's armed wing – the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades – in a raid on the northern West Bank city of Nablus, apparently in retaliation for the shooting of an Israeli driving near the settlement at Shavei Shomron. Relatives who witnessed the Nablus shootings said soldiers fired at two of the men without warning. An Israeli army spokesman, Major Peter Lerner, said troops fired after the three men failed to respond to calls to surrender.

It also follows the discovery of an improvised explosive device on a busy road leading to the huge Israeli settlement at Modi'in with a letter from an al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades unit claiming responsibility. The two incidents have followed recent warnings from both Israelis and Palestinians that frustration among a younger generation of al-Aqsa members – which signed an amnesty deal with Israel in 2007 – over the lack of progress in the almost moribund peace process was in danger of boiling over.

An aide to Abbas described the killings as a "grave Israeli escalation" which showed "Israel is not interested in peace and is trying to explode the situation".
The article goes on to wring its collective hands about the treatment of human rights groups in Israel that bravely expose all the evilness of the Israeli government. Apparently most of the public ignore them, and the government harasses them by requiring them to state publicly their sources of funding. Oh the perfidy!

Posted by: Steve White 2009-12-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=286472