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From: Rima Anabtawi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:49 AM
To: Al-Awda-News
Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] Unending carnage
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
7 - 13 March 2002
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/576/re62.htm
Unending carnage
In the aftermath of the deadly blows inflicted on the Israeli army by the
Palestinians, Sharon sent his troops into the refugee camps. Khaled Amayreh
reports from occupied Jerusalem
Despite the death of over 60 Palestinians and 30 Israelis this week,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not toned down his bellicose
rhetoric. His seeming intent to perpetuate the killing comes in spite of
the worsening bloodshed.
Following the latest killing and another emergency cabinet meeting on
Sunday, Sharon briefed Israeli reporters that pressure on the Palestinians
would have to be upped in order to force them to return to the negotiating
table.
Anyone wishing to negotiate with the Palestinians must first hit them
hard, we must inflict heavy losses on their side, he said.
Sharon's provocative sabre-rattling translated into yet more terror being
inflicted on the Palestinians, whether combatants or innocent civilians. In
return, Palestinian militants carried out increasingly daring reprisals
against Israeli soldiers and settlers.
In the aftermath of last week's ruthless rampage at the Balata and Jenin
refugee camps, in which more than 28 Palestinians -- civilians in their
majority -- were killed and 260 others wounded,
Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated.
On Sunday the 3rd of March, a lone Palestinian resistance fighter, armed
with an old WWII carbine rifle, carried out a surprise early morning attack
on an Israeli army roadblock north of Ramallah, killing eight soldiers and
two settlers, and injuring five others before escaping unscathed.
According to Israeli press reports, the Palestinian guerrilla fired off 25
bullets in 20 minutes at the crack Israeli troops until his ancient gun
jammed, at which time he dropped it and fled away.
Twelve hours earlier, another Palestinian -- the 19-year- old son of a
refugee from the Dheishe camp -- reportedly disguised himself as a rabbi
and blew himself up in an ultra-orthodox Haredi neighbourhood in West
Jerusalem, killing himself and seven Israelis, including a woman and three
children.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military wing, declared
responsibility for both operations, stating that Jewish blood will
continue to be spilled as long as Palestinian blood flows.
The two incidents, which occurred within 10 hours of each other, shook an
Israeli society that, unlike the Palestinians, is unaccustomed to absorbing
such a high number of fatalities on a single day.
Responding to allegations that the Palestinian operations were related to
Israeli army incursions into the refugee camps, Sharon had the audacity to
claim that IDF activity was unrelated.
But, in a reaction that betrays the shifting public mood in Israel, several
commentators remarked that the prime minister was surely fooling himself
and his people or was becoming progressively more detached from reality in
making such a claim.
In a bid to conceal the failure of his military option in suppressing the
Palestinian Intifada, the Israeli army reoccupied Jenin.
This time, over 40 tanks, 2,000 troops and several helicopter gunships
effectively turned the densely-populated camp into a war zone.
A local refugee told Al-Ahram Weekly that the attacking army was shooting
at everybody and everything. They are targeting men, women, children,
shops, mosques, animals, homes and schools, said Khalil Abu Bakr.
They are intent on killing and maiming as many civilians as possible,
sighed the middle-aged man, adding Don't believe them when they tell you
that they don't target civilians. By 5.00 o'clock in the afternoon, eight
Palestinians were dead, and more than eighty injured, many seriously.
Several of the wounded lay in the camp's narrow streets, dying or awaiting
to be transferred to hospital. However, the Israeli army was barring
ambulances from entering the besieged camp. Their wilful obstruction
resulted in several unnecessary deaths as the injured often bled to death.
As usual, the Israeli army claimed that the casualties were exclusively
gunmen and terrorists.
However, upon examining the names of the victims, it became clear that
virtually all, save one man, were civilians. The dead included two
vegetable vendors -- Rana Abu Jouhar and Naim Sabbath; a house-wife
--Samira Zubeidi, 53; and a high-school student -- 18-year-old Ayman Ghanem.
Before pulling out of the camp, the Israeli army completed the carnage by
firing a tank shell at a Red Crescent ambulance that was evacuating the
wounded to hospital.
The direct hit killed 53-year-old Dr Khalil Suleiman, head of the first-aid
department at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin and seriously
injured three of his paramedics.
The Israeli army
