By Hans Lebrecht

TEL AVIV - On April 4, the media reported that a delegation of high-ranking Palestinian officers, returning to Gaza from a meeting with Israeli counterparts, got involved in crossfire with Israeli border guards at the Israeli-Gazan Erez checkpoint.

The shots were fired just as they were about to board cars to take them back into Gaza city. The officers took cover, but three of their bodyguards were injured and the cars were riddled with bullets.

According to an official Israeli version of the incident, the Palestinians opened fire on the Israeli border guards. However, President Yasser Arafat told a different story to a delegation of the Gush-Shalom Peace Bloc, headed by the well-known activist Uri Avnery.

"Arafat was still livid when we met him two days later," Avnery said. "'It was an ambush,' Arafat asserted. He told us that the U.S. embassy pressured the Palestinian authorities into agreeing to take part in a meeting for the purpose of renewing the 'security coordination.'"

The Palestinian officers, at first, did not want to go, knowing that the Palestinian public would condemn such a meeting while Israel was 'liquidating' Palestinian resistance activists, bombarding Palestinian cities from helicopter gunships, tanks and naval vessels, demolishing ever more homes.

However, Arafat ordered his officers to attend the meeting. American Embassy cars took the three Palestinian security chiefs of the Gaza Strip, Amin al-Hindi, Muhammad Dahlan and Abd-el-Razek Majeidi, from the Erez checkpoint to the meeting place. After the meeting, in which no agreement was achieved, the American embassy cars brought the three and their bodyguards back to the checkpoint.

At Erez, there is an Israeli checkpoint and, about a hundred yards away, a Palestinian one. Between them, one has to walk. The whole area is well lit and dominated by Israeli watchtowers and fortified positions, armed with heavy machine guns.

The members of the Palestinian delegation got out of the American cars on the Israeli side and walked along the well-lit path toward the Palestinian checkpoint where their own cars were waiting.

When they were about to get in the cars, someone opened fire on them from several directions. The members of the delegation took cover while their bodyguards returned fire. Three of the latter were wounded. The crossfire went on for about three hours.

The members of the Palestinian delegation used their mobile phones to call Arafat in Ramallah. Arafat immediately called Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, Jordan's King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarrak, the European Union headquarters and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, to act to stop the shooting. Sharon, after some time, apparently gave the ceasefire order.

An Israeli army spokesman announced that the Palestinian bodyguards had opened fire on the Israeli border guards. But why would the bodyguards of such a high-ranking delegation start a shooting spree in a well-lit area surrounded by heavily armed Israeli watchtowers?

"Even an imbecile wouldn't believe that," Avneri remarked. It might be, he added, that a radical right-wing inclined local Israeli commander deliberately created the incident.

Ariel Sharon has expressed regret for the incident to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Another story enthusiastically hailed by official Israeli spokespersons and by the media is the fact that 87 U.S senators and 209 congressmen have urged President Bush to reconsider their relations with the Palestinian authorities.

These legislators are demanding that financial aid to the Palestinians be reconsidered, that the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Washington D.C. be closed and the PLO be put on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

On the other hand, the PLO representative in Washington, Hassan Abed al-Rahman responded that the letters completely ignore the suffering of Palestinians under a brutal Israeli occupation. The legislators' letters are damaging America's role in the Middle East, he stressed.

In a commentary, an Israeli Gush-Shalom spokesperson remarked that "by force of the influential U.S-Zionist lobby, the Israeli government is seemingly able to get any resolution it wants adopted by the U.S. Congress. It could probably find 87 senators and a majority of congressmen to adopt a resolution that the moon is made of green cheese."