Gil Naamati

Israeli soldiers who shot and injured two demonstrators protesting a check point to the West Bank will not be punished according to an internal investigation by the army, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

The soldiers opened fire two weeks ago when members of Anarchists Against the Wall tried to split a fence at the check point. An Israeli and an American were hurt.

The soldiers indicated later that they did not know that the demonsrators were Israeli.

The incident has turned into a political controversy in Israel. The father of the injured Israeli said on Monday that "you'd have to be drunk" to believe the army's version of the shooting.

(ANSA) - TEL AVIV, January 5 - Two weeks ago, Gil Naamati, 21, a member of a fringe Israeli group called "Anarchists Against the Fence" got seriously wounded by soldiers as he tried to cut through the razor-wire-tipped fence, throwing the local media in stupor.

He was taking part in a protest against the building of the West Bank barrier.

On Saturday, Israeli anarchists again protested against what Palestinians called "The Wall of Apartheid." Clashes occurred, water guns were used, but no one was injured.

The anarchists in Israel are also very critical to Zionism. The occupation of the Territories in 1967 was not a ''historical accident'' as Zionist parties say, but an inescapable development for the Jewish state.

The incident in which soldiers fired at demonstrators got immense media coverage. One detail however - marginal but symbolic - did not get the proper attention: the identity of the group of demonstrators, called "Anarchists Against the Fence."

At first glance, the confrontation on Friday along Israel's separation barrier seemed unremarkable.

About 20 protesters shook the chain-link fence, and some then took out pliers to cut it. After calling out warnings and firing shots into the air, Israeli troops shot at the legs of the protesters with live ammunition, the
military admits.

One man was hit in both legs and seriously wounded. The surprise was that the injured man, Gil Naamati, is a 22-year-old Israeli who had just completed three years of military service as a combat soldier.

In addition, a woman was slightly wounded. She is a 26-year-old American, Anne Farina.

The army's shooting of a Jewish Israeli peace protester has sparked a fierce debate about the conduct of the military in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Gil Naamati, 21, was seriously wounded in the legs when soldiers opened fire last Friday on demonstrators who were trying to cut through a gate in Israel's controversial separation barrier. An American woman tourist was also lightly wounded.

As the army launched an internal inquiry into the incident, leftwing politicians demanded to know why live fire had been used against unarmed protesters.

"An order to fire on people that do not fire on you is a completely illegal order," Ami Ayalon, former domestic intelligence chief and co- author of an unofficial peace initiative, told army radio yesterday.

This week at the weekly protest in Bil'in, intentions were clear from the start. While demonstrators, set on crossing the wall to their lands, had a tractor marked by a sign saying "Let us work on our lands" with them, border police officers had occupied the high rooftop of a house inside the village, and were present in larger numbers than usual along the route of the march.

As the march reached at the wall, and denied from continuing forward under the routine of Friday's closed military zone, demonstrators started pulling away and dismantling the razor wire that was blocking the gate.