Attack in the Gaza Strip – Letter from Israel

GENERAL ASSEMBLY SECURITY COUNCIL

Fifty-third session Fifty-third year

Agenda item 155

MEASURES TO ELIMINATE INTERNATIONAL

  TERRORISM

Letter dated 30 October 1998 from the Permanent

Representative of Israel to the United Nations 

addressed to the Secretary-General

I wish to call your attention to a particularly vicious attack perpetrated yesterday by Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

At approximately 8 a.m. yesterday morning at the Nezarim junction, a car bomb was detonated, targeting a schoolbus of 40 children on their daily route to class.  The bomb instead destroyed an Israeli jeep escorting the bus, which narrowly spared the children.

In the end, the explosion left one person dead and five injured, one of them seriously.  Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group opposed to the peace process, took responsibility for the attack.  The senior command for this operation involves individuals who have been engaged in terrorist attacks in the past and whose arrest Israel has repeatedly sought.

The killing came several days after Israelis and Palestinians returned from signing the Wye River Memorandum, under which the Palestinians committed themselves to doing everything in their power to prevent such acts before further stages of the peace process would be carried out.

In this context, it must be pointed out that the terrorist unit came from Gaza, which has been under Palestinian jurisdiction for five years.  The attack was, in fact, carried out by a terrorist wing of an organization which the Palestinian side has pledged to disband, with weapons it has promised to confiscate, from an area it undertook to supervise.  All of these obligations were reaffirmed in last week's pact as absolute requirements for proceeding to the next stage of its implementation.

In response to this horrific attack, it is imperative that the Palestinians start carrying out their written pledge of "zero tolerance for terror and violence" and begin the "systematic and effective combat of terrorist organizations and their infrastructure" (see Wye Memorandum, II:A).

I should be grateful if you would have the text of this letter circulated as a document of the General Assembly, under agenda item 155, and of the Security Council.

(Signed)  Dore GOLD       

Ambassador      

Permanent Representative

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