15 - 21 February 2001
Issue No.521
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 15 - 21 February 2001 Issue No.521 |
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Murderous credentials
The Israeli army's repression of the Intifada has escalated in the week following the election of right-wing Likud leader Ariel Sharon as the new prime minister. On Tuesday, defeated Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak publicly confirmed that Israel has a deliberate policy of assassinating Palestinian activists whom it charges with plotting attacks. Speaking shortly after an Israeli helicopter fired three missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip, killing a leading officer in Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 guard, Barak said: "Anyone who intends to harm Israelis will not escape, and the long arm of the Israeli Defence Forces will know how to locate him, and even settle the score with him."
In an unprecedented statement confirming its responsibility for the killing, the Israeli army accused the assassinated Palestinian officer, 60-year-old Massoud Ayad, of setting up a branch of the Lebanese group Hizbullah in Gaza and smuggling weapons to Palestinian self-rule areas.
Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada began nearly five months ago, Israel has escalated its extrajudicial killing of Palestinians suspected of carrying out attacks. Local and international human rights groups and world governments have repeatedly criticised the policy.
Palestinian public security chief Abdel-Razeq Al-Majaydeh called the killing of Ayad "a savage assassination." For his part, Barak praised the Israeli security forces for their attack on "a senior terrorist."
Shortly before the missile assault on Ayad, Israeli soldiers shot dead a 14-year-old Palestinian boy in Gaza. According to hospital sources, Bilal Ramadan was shot in the heart near the Karni crossing to Israel.
A day earlier, 12 February, occupation troops in the West Bank killed two more innocent Palestinians, one in Ramallah and the other in Bethlehem. Both killings amounted to cold-blooded murder.
According to eyewitnesses, Israeli troops manning an army outpost near the village of Khader, five kilometres south-west of Bethlehem, suddenly opened fire on a group of Palestinian workers waiting for the bus that would take them to their jobs. As a result, 22-year-old Ziad Ali Abu Eswayy, Israeli work permit in hand, was killed immediately.
Nearly two hours later, near the village of Rafat, south of Ramallah, Israeli occupation soldiers opened fire on a Palestinian car trying to circumvent their roadblock, injuring its driver, 35-year-old Atef Al-Nabulsi of East Jerusalem.
Bleeding badly, Al-Nabulsi managed to park his car over two hundred metres from the nearest Israeli soldier, apparently in the hope that he would be taken to hospital.
Israeli soldiers, however, prevented Palestinians from approaching the vehicle to help him. A soldier disembarked from his Jeep, headed straight to the moaning man and fired several bullets at his head and chest, killing him instantly.
"This is sheer murder, they killed him after he was injured. You call those soldiers? They are not. They are criminals, murderers and gangsters," an eyewitness told the Voice of Palestine, the official PA radio.
In a repetition of its time-worn tactic, the Israeli army sought to extenuate its ugly brutality by concocting a radically different story, parroted by the Israeli media, according to which the two Palestinians were killed "in clashes" with the occupation troops.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces using artillery and heavy machine guns stepped up bombing of the Palestinian towns of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron in the West Bank, as well as Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip.
In Bethlehem, the bombardment targeted Beit Jala and the adjacent Azza and Ayda refugee camps, injuring several people and inflicting heavy damage on buildings and houses. At least two houses were completely burned in the incident.
A particularly fierce bombardment targeted Ramallah's twin city, Al-Bireh, the same day, wreaking havoc on the Jinan and Satah Marhaba neighbourhoods. As a result, numerous houses were either destroyed or badly damaged, driving occupants out of their homes to seek makeshift shelters.
Israeli bombs also hit the offices of the semi-official Palestinian daily Al-Hayatul Jadida, the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Ministry of Local Government.
The increasingly rabid Israeli violence was interpreted as revenge for the 11 February killing, ostensibly by Palestinian fighters, of an armed Israeli settler travelling on a bypass road west of Beit Jala.
The killing of the settler, the first Israeli casualty since Sharon's election victory on 6 February, infuriated settlers. The killing of the two innocent and defenceless Palestinians, Al-Nabulsi and Abu Eswayy, was apparently an effort by the Israeli army to appease the settler movement and "even the score." Since the beginning of the Intifada, 400 Palestinians and 53 Israeli soldiers and settlers have been killed.
Israeli violence continued in the Gaza Strip, where occupation troops protecting the Gush Katif settlement randomly bombarded Palestinian neighbourhoods in Khan Younis and surrounding areas for six hours on the night of 12 February.
The bombardment, described by Palestinians as one of the most intense since the beginning of the Intifada, forced hundreds of Palestinians in the Khan Younis refugee camp to flee their homes.
According to hospital sources, over 45 Palestinian civilians were injured, 26 by gunfire and the rest by shrapnel. Five of the injured were reported in difficult-to-critical condition.
In addition, scores of people suffered from a new type of tear gas which the Israeli army recently began using in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian medical sources described the new nerve agent as "occupying an intermediate position between normal tear gas and chemical nerve agents used in warfare."
Predictably, the Israeli army denied using such an agent, describing the gas as "non lethal."
Meanwhile, Palestinian leaders from across the political spectrum reiterated their determination to respond to Ariel Sharon's bellicosity with a continuation of the Intifada.
Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin vowed in a press interview on 11 February to "respond in kind to any miscalculations by Sharon." "They know what we are capable of doing," said Yassin, apparently alluding to suicide-bomb attacks, which both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have carried out against Israel.
"We are not going to cede our rights just because they happen to be militarily stronger than we are now. The strong don't remain strong forever and the weak don't remain weak forever," he added.
Fatah was no less defiant towards Sharon. "Fatah's response to the child-killer will be loud and clear -- his fate will not be better than that of his predecessors," said Kamel Hmeid, Fatah leader in Bethlehem, in a statement on 12 February. "The settlements he spent his life building and establishing at the expense of Palestinian lands will turn into hell and fire," the statement added.
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