Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer has ordered a probe of the occupation army's failure to eradicate Hamas military leaders in the Gaza Strip, including Mohammad Deif, who is believed to be the Gaza head of the group’s Ezzeddin Al Qasam Brigades, reported the Israeli media on Thursday.
The other leader mentioned in the reports was Adnan Al Ghul, reportedly the most senior wanted Palestinian who Israel has targeted so far.
Haaretz reported that a debriefing would be held Thursday in the offices Ben Eliezer in an effort to ascertain why Israeli assassination attempts had failed.
The Israeli press called the failed operation agaist Ghul “the big miss,” since Deif and Ghul top Israel’s wanted list for “terrorists.”
In the missile attack near Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said Israel's US-made Apache attack helicopters fired at two cars carrying Deif, Ghul and his son, Bilal, 22, according to AFP.
Palestinian sources confirmed that Ghul was one of Hamas' most senior bomb-makers, while his son belonged to the Popular Resistance Committees, which coordinate the armed activities of diverse anti-Israeli resistance groups.
The Israeli army said in a statement that the helicopters fired on the cars because their occupants were "engaged in mortar bombings."
Meanwhile, Israeli troops pounded positions in the Gaza Strip and killed a Palestinian policeman, after earlier shootings ended in the deaths of four Palestinians near Nablus in the West Bank, said the agency.
The Nablus killings came just hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat agreed to hold talks on ending the latst uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insisted there would be no moves on the internationally backed Mitchell peace plan until Palestinian attacks were halted for at least a week.
"We have not given up on this test period of seven days, which was agreed with US Secretary of State Colin Powell," Sharon said after meeting Fischer, who wrapped up a three-day mission to revive the moribund peace process.
Fischer said the plan - which calls for a truce, a six-week cooling-off period, a freeze on Jewish settlement building and an eventual return to peace talks - should be carried out.
Fischer on Tuesday engineered a meeting between Peres and Arafat to discuss a phased ceasefire, although no date has been set for the talks.
Arafat and Peres will have a limited briefing when they hold their planned meeting, the German Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
"This is a case of a very restricted mandate on both sides, namely to reduce the violence and improve the Palestinians' situation," the foreign ministry said.
Senior US officials later expressed doubt whether the German-brokered meeting between Arafat and Peres would be held, but France and Russia applauded the news of the planned meeting as a way to end the bloodshed.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Palestinian police Ghazi Jabali said one of his officers, Mahmoud Jasser, 23, was shot dead in Rafah near the Egyptian border while inspecting a house that the Israeli army had recently left.
Jabali said the Israeli forces had planted a bomb in the house and Jasser was inspecting it when he was shot in the chest.
In a statement, Israel's army later said an armed man had been spotted advancing in a "suspect manner" and that a unit opened fire in his direction.
Meanwhile, four Israeli soldiers and three civilians were injured overnight in separate incidents with Palestinians in the West Bank, a military source was quoted by AFP as saying Thursday.
Three soldiers and an officer received light wounds in exchanges of automatic weapons fire near Tulkarem in the north on Thursday morning.
Three civilians, two adults and a child, were injured by stones late Wednesday as they drove outside the village of Houssan near the southern town of Bethlehem.
Four other Palestinians were shot dead and their bodies mutilated with axes near Nablus early Wednesday, in clashes that erupted when an elite Israeli unit surprised a group of Palestinian activists about to plant a bomb close to a Jewish settlement, the Israeli army said.
However, Mahmoud Al Alul, the governor of Palestinian-run Nablus, told Palestinian radio a gunbattle broke out after the men tried to rescue a Palestinian who had been wounded overnight.
The bullet-riddled bodies of 22-year-old Hakkam Tayeh, 25-year-old Faadi Samaana and Zaher Ismail, 30, were found near Nablus in the early morning.
The body of the fourth victim, 23-year-old Ahmad Fares, was taken away by the Israelis, an official from Arafat's Fateh movement said.
Around 10,000 people gathered in Nablus for the funerals of the four, chanting revenge and waving the flags of armed resistance groups.
"The Israelis must understand we don't want settlements," a Fateh member shouted through a loudspeaker, reported AFP – Albawaba.com
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