Nazir Majally • Asharq Al-Awsat

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 5 July 2003 — Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon has admitted to a number of bad calls during the intifada, in an interview published yesterday in Yediot Aharonot newspaper to mark his first year in office. “We made a certain number of mistakes, such as the recent strike on the car of a Hamas terrorist, not knowing that his wife and girl were with him,” he told Israel’s top-selling paper.

Yaalon was referring to the June 12 helicopter raid in Gaza City that killed Yasser Taha, a military leader of the Islamist movement, wife and their infant daughter. He also cited the killing by Israeli troops in October 2002 of a sexagenarian Palestinian woman in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Yaalon deplored the damage caused to the Palestinian education and culture ministries during the so-called Defensive Shield operation in the spring of 2002. “This was a blunder. There were intolerable acts of vandalism,” said the army chief, who was second in command at the time.

He also explained he was against the siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “My position was not accepted. We paid a price for it. The Americans issued us a severe reprimand,” Yaalon said, also arguing that the veteran Palestinian leader came out stronger of the five-week siege.

Palestinian authorities, meanwhile, yesterday battled to keep the fledgling peace process afloat by arresting the alleged perpetrators of a rocket attack on a Jewish settlement and holding talks with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements.

Four members of the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the few group, which has not signed up to a recent truce, were detained in connection with the rocket attack on the Kfar Darom settlement which led to Israeli authorities temporarily reimposing a roadblock on the main highway through the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian security sources also revealed that they had arrested seven other militants. The attack triggered an official protest from Israel, whose troops withdrew from most of Gaza on Sunday after receiving security guarantees in an accord with the Palestinians. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas fought hard to rally the groups which remain skeptical about his efforts to forge peace with the Israelis through the framework of the US-backed roadmap. Abbas met with senior Hamas figures here late Thursday and was due to hold a similar round of talks with Islamic Jihad leaders later yesterday.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad deny Israel’s right to exist and have officially rejected the roadmap, although their agreement to halt attacks is seen as vital for it to have any chance of success. “We will hear from Abu Mazen (Abbas’ nom de guerre) about the developing situation and about his meeting with (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon” last Tuesday, senior Islamic Jihad official Mohammad Al-Hindi told AFP.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Army said it arrested 12 Palestinians in the West Bank overnight, mostly Fatah activists suspected of involvement in anti-Israeli attacks.

Six were arrested in the southern city of Hebron while the others were detained in the north of the West Bank, a military spokesman said.