At Mass Burial For Gaza Family, Sadness and Fury

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip, Nov. 9 -- This farming community buried the al-Athamnah family Thursday, after marching through muddy streets bearing the bodies of the dead aloft and reaffirming in angry chants its commitment to war with Israel.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians squeezed through narrow lanes here a day after Israeli artillery shells killed 20 civilians, all but three of them from the same family. The Israeli military announced Thursday that the bombardment of the neighborhood was the result of a "technical failure in the artillery radar system."

"You see the sadness everywhere," said Rawda Hamad, 40, one of scores of women in enveloping black gowns who had gathered at the burial site. "And violence will bring violence."

As the mass funeral unfolded, Palestinian leaders compared the Beit Hanoun shelling to the Israeli airstrike that killed at least 28 civilians in the Lebanese town of Qana this summer. Meanwhile, Israelis debated what appeared to be another military mistake, with reaction ranging from abashed to unapologetic.

The Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem has called for a war-crimes investigation. A prominent Israeli journalist, however, attributed the incident to unabated Palestinian rocket fire into Israel, arguing that "such behavior carries a price tag."

"When you fire rockets, shells fall," wrote Ben Caspit, a senior columnist for the daily newspaper Maariv. "When one of them strays it is a shame, it is disastrous, it is bad, but that is how it is. Every other method has been tried, and failed. With scoundrels, you behave like a scoundrel, and with murderous, bloodthirsty terrorism that wants to wipe you off the map, you have to respond accordingly: Wipe it out."

The dawn shelling of Hamad Street that killed 17 members of the al-Athamnah family, at least seven of them children, has highlighted the absence of any political process to end this conflict as Israelis and Palestinians alike are despairing of their leaders.

Israeli forces moved into Beit Hanoun last week in an attempt to stop the frequent rocket fire into Israel, some of which originates from olive and citrus orchards here.

The six-day operation battered the town of 28,000 people, many of whom were returning to the daily routine of school and work when the shells hit the al-Athamnahs' fourth-floor apartment Wednesday, but it did not reduce the rocket attacks that persist more than a year after Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip.

Six rockets, which pack little explosive power but terrify residents of Israeli border cities with their frequency, landed Thursday in Israel. The Israeli military said two civilians were wounded in the attacks, carried out by Palestinian fighters with little apparent fear of death.

"What is your highest wish?" a Hamas gunman yelled into a microphone from the back of a pickup truck as it inched through the streets here.

"To die for the sake of God!" hundreds of Palestinians responded as the funeral procession made its way to the graveyard on the eastern edge of town.