Botched airstrike escalates tension

JERUSALEM - Police and soldiers on high alert fanned out across Israel on Wednesday, setting up roadblocks amid threats of revenge from Hamas after a botched Israeli airstrike in Gaza and fears of terror attacks timed for New Year's Eve.

At nightfall, police lifted an alert that was imposed in central Israel in the morning after three men, apparently Palestinians, were apprehended in downtown Tel Aviv. Army Radio reported that the three were unarmed and were not carrying explosives.

Tel Aviv area police Chief Yossi Sedbon said police reinforcements were patrolling night spots in Tel Aviv during New Year's Eve celebrations. Several days ago Israeli security officials warned of the possibility of a New Year terror attack aimed at a public building or a holy site.

In the West Bank late Wednesday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 16-year-old Palestinian who was in a group of youths throwing rocks at Israeli cars on a road west of Nablus, relatives said. The military said the youth was building a stone barrier across the road and tried to flee when soldiers told him to surrender.

Also, the military expelled a Palestinian, 25-year-old Mustafa Abed from a refugee camp next to Nablus, to the Gaza Strip late Wednesday, Palestinians said. Abed was the last of a group of 18 to be sent to Gaza. The military said they were involved in terrorism.

Tension rose after Israeli helicopters fired missiles Tuesday at a car in Gaza City, targeting two Hamas activists. No one was killed, but the airstrike on Hamas, the first in more than three months, jeopardized an apparent understanding under which Hamas halted bombings inside Israel and Israel stopped targeting its leaders.

Raanan Gissin, a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Hamas had not stopped attacks "for one minute," pointing to dozens of mortar and homemade rocket attacks, most of them against Israeli settlements in Gaza.

"These two people were on the way to launch a Qassam rocket," Gissin said. "We had to stop them."

Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin pledged that Israel would pay a high price for the helicopter attack, indicating renewed attacks inside Israel.

Some Israelis wondered about the wisdom of renewing airstrikes against Hamas given the relative lull in attacks inside Israel by the Gaza-based Islamic group, which is responsible for most of the 106 suicide bombings that have killed more than 400 Israelis during three years of conflict.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat was harshly critical. "These Israeli policies of continuing the assassinations will only undermine our efforts to reach a comprehensive and full cease-fire and undermine the efforts to prepare a meeting between the two prime ministers," he said.

SOLDIER ARRESTED: An Israeli soldier has been arrested and charged with shooting and critically wounding a British man in April in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said Wednesday.

Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old university student, was shot in the head while with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group whose activists volunteer to serve as buffers between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians.

Hurndall was transported to London in a vegetative state and is still on life support. On Oct.29, Carl Arrindell, a family spokesman, said doctors believed "the quality of life is so low there is a question as to whether it is right to keep him (on life support) for any protracted period of time."

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the Israeli soldier was arrested Tuesday, and a military court ordered him to remain in custody. He was not identified.

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