Israel Alleges Attack in Gaza After 2 Officers, Arab Killed : Mideast: Shooting of Palestinian carrying toy gun occurs after his truck hits jeep carrying Jewish police. PLO says collision was an accident.

JERUSALEM — Two Israelis and a Palestinian were killed Wednesday in what Israel said was a Palestinian attack on an Israeli convoy escorting Jewish settlers to the isolated settlement of Netzarim in the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip.

An armed Palestinian rammed his truck into a jeep carrying border police and police near Netzarim, on a road controlled by Israeli forces, Police Minister Moshe Shahal said.

Shahal told the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, that the Palestinian leaped from his truck after the crash, then opened fire on the convoy before he was gunned down by an Israeli army officer and a settler.

But late Wednesday night, Israeli security sources said the Palestinian driver was armed only with a toy pistol. They insisted, however, that he slammed into the convoy as a deliberate attack.

A border policeman and another police officer were killed; two others were injured, Shahal reported.

The border police were escorting settlers to the tiny settlement south of Gaza City.

Soldiers and border police who guard the settlement have been targets of several Palestinian attacks. They are required to escort settlers whenever they venture out of their homes.

After each attack near Netzarim, a debate rages in the Israeli Cabinet, and in newspaper Op-Ed pages, about the wisdom of Israel maintaining such isolated settlements.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has said publicly that Netzarim serves no security or political purpose. But he has also vowed that no Israeli settlement will be dismantled before Israel and the Palestinians negotiate final-status issues beginning in 1996.

The problem of how to protect dozens of settlements in the West Bank that are as small and isolated as Netzarim is at the heart of Israel’s delayed redeployment of its troops in the West Bank. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian security forces can guarantee the safety of soldiers or settlers from attacks by militants willing to commit suicide.

Palestinian officials disputed the Israeli version of events Wednesday. Marwan Kanafani, a spokesman for Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, said the Palestinian driver accidentally crashed into the Israeli jeep and was unarmed.

Kanafani accused the Israelis of planting a pistol on the Palestinian after the incident.

“We have no proof that the driver was carrying a gun or a weapon,” said Brig. Gen. Saeb Ajez, commander of the Palestinian security forces in northern Gaza. “The Israelis overreacted and killed the young man.”