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Date: Thu, Apr 19, 2001, 12:19pm
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MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/19: The
following three insightful articles from The Independent tody and a
summary from Palestine Monitor in occupied Palestine:
BATTLE
RAGES NEAR BETHLEHEM AS ISRAELI TANKS BLAST VILLAGES
By Phil Reeves in the Gaza Strip
Attempts by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to crush Palestinian
violence by adopting still harsher military tactics came to nought last
night, after guerrillas in the Gaza Strip fired more mortars into
Israel, and one of the worst battles for months erupted on the edge of
Bethlehem.
A day after causing a furore by reoccupying several square kilometres of
the Gaza Strip and then withdrawing under international pressure
Israel found itself back at square one last night after five Palestinian
mortars fell close to a kibbutz inside Israel.
At the same time, the hills of Jerusalem echoed as the Israeli army
fired tank shells, grenades and heavy machineguns into the Palestinian
village of Beit Jala, the source of Palestinian shooting attacks on a
nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo, on the southern edge of Jerusalem.
The new round of violence came as Mr Sharon faced mounting criticism at
home for capitulating to American pressure by pulling out of a patch of
northern Gaza, seized early on Tuesday. Earlier yesterday, the Israeli
army went back into the Gaza Strip for more demolition work, sending a
tank and bulldozers into Rafah, in southern Gaza, to flatten a
Palestinian police station, which it said was a suspected source of
gunfire. The troops reportedly withdrew after 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials were scrambling to persuade angry
right-wing critics and Jewish settlers that Tuesday's withdrawal from
the newly-seized part of the Gaza Strip was not the result of objections
from the US, even though it came after what was by far the harshest
criticism of Israel so far by the Bush administration.
Embarrassed by what seemed an abrupt volte-face, aides to Mr Sharon
insisted yesterday that the government had earlier decided to leave the
territory, at Beit Hanoun in north-eastern Gaza, before the US publicly
condemned Israel's action. Officials said the seizure of the land was to
stop it being used for mortar attacks on Israel. Last night's mortars
were thought to have been fired from the same area.
ISRAELIS
AND PALESTINIANS CLASH AS VIOLENCE CONTINUES
Palestinians fire mortars at Gaza Strip settlement
Palestinians fired mortars at a settlement in the Gaza Strip and a
farming village in Israel early today, drawing Israeli return fire that
seriously wounded a supporter of the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The renewed mortar fire came despite two Israeli incursions into
Palestinian�controlled areas of Gaza that were aimed at stopping such
attacks, and left Prime Minister Ariel Sharon open to criticism from
many quarters within Israel.
Hamas announced today that one of its activists, Khalil Sakani, was
seriously wounded in the head by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell
during a mortar attack late yesterday at the Jewish settlement of Kfar
Darom in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantissi implied, but did not say
specifically, that Sakani was involved in firing the mortars when he was
wounded.
Hamas in the past has claimed responsibility for mortar attacks.
Five more mortars hit the Israeli communal farm of Nir Am on the edge of
the Gaza Strip, also late yesterday.
Israel had tried to stop the mortar fire by briefly seizing two small
slivers of Palestinian�controlled territory in Gaza in separate
operations Tuesday and yesterday.
The Israeli incursions drew a strong U.S. condemnation, and Sharon spoke
yesterday to U.S. President George W. Bush to try to clear the air.
Sharon told Bush the Israeli army "will have no choice but to carry out
preventive measures" if the mortar fire persists, a statement by
Sharon's office said. It was not clear whether such measures included
more incursions.
Sharon also said the Israel takeover of Palestinian areas was intended
to be brief from the start.
However, the events leading up to Israel's day�long takeover of a
square mile of northeastern Gaza earlier this week raised lingering
questions.
The brigadier general in charge of the operation initially said his men
were prepared to remain for months, but Sharon ordered a withdrawal of
troops later in the day, after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
sharply rebuked Israel.
The incursion and hasty withdrawal prompted criticism from settlers, who
charged that Sharon was not doing enough to provide security, from
hard�line politicians who said he had succumbed to U.S. pressure, and
from peace activists, who said that he was thinking only in terms of
force, not negotiations.
Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said today that Sharon never informed
the security Cabinet about the planned takeover and as a result got
himself entangled in a diplomatic spat with the United States.
"If we cross the invisible, but existing line of international
legitimacy, of what our friends are prepared to accept, we are
immediately reprimanded and sent back to some permitted track, and this
is what happened," Sneh, an ex�general, told Israel radio.
PALESTINIANS
RETURN TO A FLATTENED WASTELAND
By Phil Reeves in Beit
Hanoun, Gaza Strip
Victory is supposed to be sweet. So one might have expected an air of
triumph among the Palestinians as they returned to the patch of land in
Gaza that Israel's army had reoccupied, only to be pulled out by Ariel
Sharon less than a day later.
But there was nothing remotely sweet yesterday, except for the smell of
fresh oranges crushed beneath the tracks of tanks and bulldozers which
had crashed into the area the day before, mowing down hundreds of citrus
trees.
The fruity aroma hung strangely in the air as Palestinians arrived from
the nearby town of Beit Hanoun to inspect the damage that they, and we,
had been unable to see the day before without running the risk of being
shot by the Israeli forces who briefly held the territory.
What they found was a sight all too familiar to the 1.2 million Arabs of
Gaza a muddy wasteland about a mile long and 100 yards wide gouged
out of the landscape. It was covered in shredded tree trunks, scattered
with oranges, and punctuated by the detritus of at least eight flattened
buildings, including a border police complex.
Dazed-looking people sifted through the concrete heaps that used to be
their homes, some of which had been pounded into pieces no bigger than a
fist, searching for anything that could be salvaged. A couple of men
showed me two wrecked water wells, and said there were several more
which means the surrounding orange orchards will probably also die.
"Just look, and write," said one young man, as his wife fished out
clothes from the rubble.
If part of the Israeli army's intention was to clear the area to stop
Palestinians from using this corner of north-east Gaza to launch mortar
attacks on Israeli settlements or towns over the border an attack on
Sderot was cited as the provocation for the raid then it did a poor
job. Most of the orchard-covered land around remained intact, providing
cover for more guerrilla assaults. Palestinian militants demonstrated as
much shortly after the Israelis withdrew, by firing at least six more
mortars from the same area at the Israeli-controlled Erez industrial
zone in northern Gaza and at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.
But the operation had far more to do with collective punishment, the
same clumsy instrument that Israel has repeatedly used to try to force
Yasser Arafat to quell Palestinian attacks during the last seven months.
Gaza has been under almost permanent economic siege; a third of the
population lives on less than $2 a day; thousands of acres and scores of
Arab homes have been knocked down. So far all of this misery has been
inflicted to no avail.
The word "reoccupation" does not adequately describe Israel's
short-lived land-snatch, as all of the fenced-in 28-mile long Gaza Strip
has remained under de facto Israeli occupation, even after 1994 when
more than two-thirds of it was placed under Palestinian administration.
Throughout, Israel retained a stranglehold on its borders, economy,
energy supplies, and water.
This week's incursion was another harsh reminder of the continuing
Israeli occupation, and the need to end it the primary purpose of
the Palestinian uprising. "It is totally counter-productive," said Jihad
al-Wazzir, son of Abu Jihad, a leading PLO official assassinated by
Israel 13 years ago. "The more Israel hits us, the more entrenched
positions become."
In the end, it was also counter-productive for Mr Sharon within Israel
itself. The Prime Minister's hasty order to withdraw left many Israelis
with the impression that he buckled under pressure from the United
States, and was pulling out his tanks after a tongue-lashing from the US
Secretary of State, Colin Powell.
No matter that one senior cabinet minister, Silvan Shalom, insisted
yesterday that the decision to withdraw had been taken at 11am on
Tuesday, before Washington publicly reacted, or that Mr Sharon's office
said the operation was always intended to end on the same day. To many,
it looked weak and indecisive. This was not what they had hoped for from
the ex-general sold to them at the ballot box as "Mr Security".
URGENT UPDATE: Israeli Crosses the Red Line
[The Palestine Monitor, April 19, 2001]: The Israeli military launched
its most aggressive attack against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on
Monday April 16, 2001 when Israeli tanks, helicopters and navy gun ships
heavily shelled several Palestinian areas throughout the Strip before
re-occupying Palestinian territory along the border with Israel. One
Palestinian policeman was killed, 30 civilians were injured and 12
Palestinian Security Services buildings were destroyed along with
several civilian homes and other buildings and tens of dunams of
agricultural land.
At midnight on Monday, Israeli forces backed by tank fire re-occupied
two chunks of territory near Beit Hanoun, destroying Palestinian
property in its wake and killing 23 year-old Mohammed Al Masri and
injuring 6 other civilians. By Tuesday morning, Israeli forces had
sealed off the Gaza Strip, splitting it into three zones demarcated with
tanks, and fully seized Palestinian territory east of Erez border
crossing and a few kilometers south of Erez along the Gaza-Israel border
fence. Ten hours after it had withdrawn from Palestinian territory in
Beit Hanoun, the Israeli military re-entered the area and demolished a
Palestinian police station.
Also on Tuesday, Israeli forces in Gaza opened fire on civilians in the
Rafah refugee camp, killing 10-year-old Barah el Shael, and in a
separate incident, Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Hamza
Abeid at the Karni crossing. In the West Bank, Israeli tanks shelled
residences in the town of El Khader killing 16-year-old Rami Musa and
Israeli forces in Tulkarem shot and killed 17-year-old Bassam Zaharan.
These attacks follow two other attacks on Palestinian areas in Gaza;
Khan Younis on Wednesday April 11 and Rafah Saturday April 14, in which
Israeli bulldozers accompanied by tanks demolished a total of 47 homes
and 20 stores, leaving over 700 people homeless and 83 injured by
Israeli gunfire.
Israeli military action against Palestinian residential areas continued
well into Wednesday night, when Israeli tanks shelled the Bethlehem
area, including the Christian towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala,
injuring ten's of residents.
MiD-EasT
RealitieS - http://www.MiddleEast.Org
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