-Caveat Lector-
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=90783
The Independent
World stays silent as Israel flattens Palestinian bases
By Phil Reeves in Gaza
27 August 2001
More than 12 hours after Israeli jets roared in before dawn yesterday to
flatten security headquarters in Gaza and the West Bank to avenge the
Palestinians' first major guerrilla infiltration into an Israeli army base,
not a whisper of complaint had emerged from the international community.
Only three months of the Middle East's "summer of hate" have been needed for
Israel's use of American-made F-16 and F-15 warplanes to bomb the
Palestinians to be seen as a routine military tactic.
When Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, first used F-16s in May, killing
a dozen Palestinians in the West Bank in answer to a suicide bombing, there
was an outcry; it was the first attack by warplanes on the Palestinians of
the occupied territories since the 1967 war. Israel's army held off from
using them again for weeks afterwards. But yesterday � the third such
strike � the world shrugged it off.
By sunset, there had been no significant criticism, no protest that this was
another example of excessive force.
Israel was focused on the incidents that prompted the bombing raids � an
attack before dawn on Saturday by two Palestinian guerrillas from the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who managed to infiltrate
a heavily fortified army base in a hillock in southern Gaza and killed three
soldiers, including a major. Israel's army commanders have been highly
embarrassed by the assault, which is the first of its kind during the
11-month intifada, and have launched an inquiry.
Later on Saturday, two more Jewish settlers � a married couple � were killed
in a West Bank ambush.
The F-16's laser-guided missiles used in the strikes are designed to bring
down buildings like playing cards. Most of the main headquarters of the
Palestinian police in Gaza City, a large complex that once housed hundreds
of men, was turned into a heap of dust and broken concrete. One half of the
four-storey building came crashing down; a third of a nearby administrative
building was similarly destroyed.
The scene was the same 10 miles down the road, close to the Jewish
settlement of Kfar Darom. A base belonging to Palestinian military
intelligence, but evacuated three months ago, lay in a pile, adorned only
with a tattered Palestinian flag that continued to fly from a flagpole above
a sign showing the unit's insignia.
There is no comparison between these ruins and those buildings hit by
missiles fired from helicopters, Israel's most frequent form of aerial
attack in the occupied territories. The latter are usually intact, but
punctured by a large hole. The former look as if they have been brought
tumbling down by an enormous earthquake.
And that is the crucial point. The F-16 strikes hit buildings belonging to
Yasser Arafat's security apparatus, which the Israelis knew were likely to
be empty. The weapons accurately found their targets. A handful of people
were injured but no one was killed � although a man died in Rafa, southern
Gaza, in a separate Israeli demolition raid on the ground.
The air raid was clinically executed, and almost ritualistic punishment,
designed to intimidate the Palestinians by providing them with another
example of Israel's massive military superiority. But this is an incredibly
dangerous game. It is all too easy to imagine an F-16 hitting not a police
station, but an apartment block crammed � as they usually are in the
grotesquely overcrowded Gaza � with families.
A massacre would ratchet up the conflict to a terrible new level. The United
States has played an important role in creating the conditions in which it
is now possible for Israel to deploy F-16s without incurring an
international backlash. The message that has been emanating from George
Bush, the US president, while on holiday is that he does not want to get
involved in a conflict that can only lose him votes, and that he will not
complain if Israel toughens its methods further.
Gaza was not the only place in the cross-hairs of the F-16 bombers
yesterday. The Israelis also flattened a police station in Salfit, a
Palestinian town south of the Ariel corridor � a finger of occupied land in
the northern West Bank that has been steadily populated with settlers.
Reports have long been amassing of Jewish settlers using violence to try to
drive Arabs off the land, which is already under total Israeli military
control, and which Israel wants to annex, should it ever get a peace deal.
Yesterday, Israel peace activists were puzzling over why their air force had
hit Salfit, where the military closure was tightened yesterday.
Also yesterday Gaza was celebrating what was deemed to have been a
successful attack by its fighters on a base belonging to the occupying
Israelis. Posters of the two dead DFLP guerrillas posing with their weapons
have already begun to adorn the streets. No one seems to see any
contradiction between their role as guerrillas for a Marxist opposition
group, and their membership of Mr Arafat's security apparatus. One, Amin Abu
Hatab, was a member of military intelligence; the other, Hisham Abu Jamous,
was a border policeman.
The DFLP � hitherto inactive in the military side of the intifada � appears
satisfied with the results despite the death of their two gunmen. The DFLP,
like the mainstream Fatah, is against attacks against civilians inside
Israel. DFLP officials see the raid on the Israel base as an example of the
best form of resistance � a war fought against Israeli soldiers and settlers
in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. "It was meant as a message, that we can
do this and that we can do it inside Gaza, despite the high level of
security," said Saleh Zeidan, the DFLP's political spokesman. Asked if there
would be more, he smiled bleakly. "We hope so," he replied.
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