Israel: Palestinian explosives caused beach deaths

[Stella_Artois]

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- An explosion on a Gaza beach that killed seven people last week was caused by explosives planted there by Palestinian militants, not artillery fire from an Israeli navy gunboat, Israeli military sources said.

The Israeli investigation concluded that the possibility any of the six artillery shells fired from the gunboat last Friday could have landed on the beach was "almost nil," the sources said.

The deaths of seven people -- all members of a Palestinian family having a beach picnic -- prompted the military wing of Hamas to resume rocket strikes against Israel after a hiatus of more than a year.

The Israel Defense Forces report, to be presented to the Israeli defense minister and Israeli chief of staff Tuesday, will cite several factors that led to the conclusion that the explosion was caused by a mine planted on the beach by Palestinian militants, the sources said.

.......

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/13/mideast.probe/index.html

Hamas attacked the picnic, it was out of control and had to be stopped, or something.

[barb162]

1. Perhaps Hamas owes an apology to the families killed and

injured?

[AnOhioan]

2. Bull

IDF covering their ass.

If the US Armed Forces can murder with impunity in Iraq why not Israel in Palestine?

[Tom Joad]

3. It's soooo Orwellian! Fantasy-fest in Israeli govt.

Who spiked the kool-aid in the government propaganda offices? They are going way over the top here, and have really out-done themselves. That's hard to do!

[Scurrilous]

6. Foreign Ministry launches PR blitz

<snip>

"Armed with the IDF's findings that the seven Palestinian deaths on a Gaza beach Friday were not caused by Israel, the Foreign Ministry launched an information campaign Tuesday night to change the minds of a world that has already largely blamed Israel.

The job, Foreign Ministry officials admitted, was not made any easier by the attack in Gaza City Tuesday that killed eight civilians and three terrorists."

<snip>

"Following Tuesday's IDF press conference, the Foreign Ministry implemented a short-term media plan that included widespread appearances of Israeli spokesmen in the foreign media explaining the IDF findings, sending out talking points to Israel's representations abroad that include statistics on Kassam rocket firings toward Sderot and the western Negev and putting an IDF film-clip on the incident on the Foreign Ministry's web site.

In explaining the recent events, the ministry is instructing its representatives abroad to stress the following points:

"The Israeli Army is a cautious, professional, accurate and ethical organization."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150191574974&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[ShockediSay]

4. dog slobber

and the AIPAC lobbyists will 'sell' it in Washington



quoting from a related article:

A report by US-based group Human Rights Watch says the deaths were likely to have been caused by Israeli shelling....

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for a full independent inquiry into the incident.

The speed with which Israel concluded its investigation underlines the sensitivity of the incident - but whether its findings change any minds is another matter, says the BBC's Nick Childs in Jerusalem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5074792.stm

[Englander]

5. Israelis blame Hamas for beach deaths

Chris McGreal in Beit Lahia
Tuesday June 13, 2006

An Israeli military investigation has blamed the killing of seven members of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach, including five children, on a land mine planted by Hamas, not shelling by the army.

But Palestinian leaders described the army's conclusions as a cover-up and a former Pentagon analyst, sent by a US human rights group to investigate the deaths, said the military has ignored evidence that leaves little doubt the family was killed by a stray Israeli shell that Israel admits is unaccounted for.

The Palestinians accused the army of rushing to clear itself to save the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, embarrassment as he tours Britain and other European countries to win support for his plan to draw the Jewish state's final borders by annexing part of the West Bank.

Television pictures of 10-year-old Huda Ghalia wailing on the beach over the bodies of her dead father and five siblings on Friday had threatened to derail Mr Olmert's public relations drive and severely embarrassed the army at home. Mr Olmert initially said he regretted the killings but in London on Monday sought to distance Israel from responsibility.

>snip

But a former Pentagon offical sent by the New York-based Human Rights Watch to investigate the death of the family has concluded that there is little doubt they were killed by an Israeli shell. "All the evidence points to the fact that it couldn't have been a mine," said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon expert on battlefields who led the US military's battle damage assessment team in Kosovo and worked for its intelligence wing, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1796691,00.html