22 - 28 February 2001
Issue No.522
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 February 2001 Issue No.522 |
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Killing frenzy
The Israeli occupation army earlier this week carried out another unlawful assassination of a Palestinian activist in the militant Islamic group, Hamas, this time in the northern West Bank town of Nablus. The killing came less than a week after the murder of a high-ranking Palestinian officer in the Gaza Strip.
A Palestinian boy, sitting at his destroyed balcony, shows machine-gun bullets fired by Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Beit Jala this week (photo: AFP)
According to Palestinian sources at the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, an Israeli army undercover death squad with sharp-shooting equipment opened fire on Mahmoud Madani, 25, on Monday as he was returning from the noon prayer at the local Mosque to his nearby grocery store, fatally wounding him in the chest and neck. Madani died at the Rafidia hospital two hours later.
The Israeli army admitted the murder, saying Madani was "liquidated" for playing an active role in the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas's military wing, the Izzedin Al-Kassam Brigades. The army also claimed Madani was planning to carry out attacks against Israeli targets.
Such charges often turn out to be mostly concocted to justify the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian political figures and also to ward off possible international criticism, as was the case last week when the United States criticised, though in a mild tone, the assassination of Massoud Ayyad, the senior officer in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's guard force, known as Force-17.
According to reliable Palestinian sources, Madani was subjected to a vigorous interrogation by Shin Bet torturers for several months in 1999, after which he was released for lack of evidence.
"They tortured him uninterruptedly to force him to confess to things he didn't do, but they failed, and now they have murdered him in cold blood on a baseless whim. Where in the civilised world does this banditry, this gangsterism, happen?" Madani's brother asked. "They just kill to satiate their apparently instinctive thirst for blood."
Madani's assassination came as one more evidence that the Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, who enjoys the full backing of both Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon and defeated Premier Ehud Barak, is intent on keeping up, if not bolstering, his policy of extra-judicial execution of Palestinian activists or those labelled as playing a leading role in the Intifada.
If so, the Israeli occupation troops could be expected to indulge in even bloodier acts of murder in coming days and weeks, and may even target more prominent Intifada leaders.
Last week, following the bus attack near Tel Aviv which killed eight Israeli soldiers and injured 17 others, former Shin Bet chief Gideon Ezra referred to Fatah's West Bank Secretary-General Marwan Al-Barghouthi as "the arch-terrorist."
"He is a terrorist, an arch-terrorist, and we shouldn't hesitate to attack terrorist leaders, including Al-Barghouthi," Ezra said during an interview with the Israeli state-run radio.
These are ominous threats, but they should be taken seriously since Ezra's views are in line with those of Sharon, who has proposed even harsher retaliation against Palestinian activists and leaders.
Although the Palestinian bus driver, Alaa Abu Elba, who carried out the attack near Tel Aviv on 14 February, insisted he had acted alone and that he had no formal or informal association with any Palestinian political group, some Israeli security circles have warned that the Palestinians, especially the three main groups active in the Intifada -- Fatah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad -- are increasingly adopting a policy of "quid pro quo" towards Israel.
Jamil Salim, the Hamas spokesman in Nablus, said that following the murder of Madani, Hamas officials had vowed to retaliate "sooner rather than later." "Hamas will avenge the blood of its sons: the Zionists should realise that shedding our blood will inevitably lead to shedding their blood. Our blood is not water and it will not go un-avenged," he said.
Salim pointed out that the Palestinian people had succeeded in putting up a solid response to Israeli brutality and blatant aggression.
"We have exposed them naked by proving that they are opposed to the very existence of the Palestinian people. In the past they claimed they were against a specific segment, namely the so-called extremists, but now it seems all Palestinians have become extremists in Zionist eyes, solely because we want to be free from their fiendish military occupation," he said.
The murder of Madani is added to the deliberate killing of seven other Palestinian civilians last weekend, six in the Hebron area and the sixth, a PA officer, in the Tulkarm region.
On Friday, 16 February, the Israeli army ferociously and indiscriminately shelled five Hebron neighbourhoods in what townspeople described as similar to what Sarajevo was subjected to during the Bosnian war.
The blind shelling and strafing with heavy machine-guns lasted for five hours, leaving Isam Rasheed Al-Tawil, 29, who was watching television with his children, dead, and several other people injured.
At the same time, an Israeli army jeep opened fire on a group of Palestinian labourers returning home from work inside Israel, killing one, 26-year old Muhamed Ismaïl Hawamdeh.
A few hours later, Israeli occupation army forces stationed on hilltops overlooking the Arab town of Hebron fired artillery shells and heavy 900 mm-calibre machine-gun rounds on a dairy farm on the northern outskirts, killing two farm workers, Shaker Manasra, 25, a married man and father of two children, and Ahmed Farajallah, 32 also married and father of four.
The continued shelling of civilian neighbourhoods in the West Bank, along with the reportedly certified use by the Israeli army of nerve gas, including phosgene and a mild variety of the deadly gas, Sarin, demonstrates that the Israeli political-military establishment is willing to go to any lengths to suppress the Palestinians struggle for independence.
On 17 February, the Israeli Prison Authority freed a Jewish terrorist who in 1993 murdered a handcuffed and leg-fettered Palestinian, Musa Abu Sabha, at a Jewish settlement near Hebron. In 1994, Yoram Shkolnik was convicted of the premeditated murder of Abu Sabha and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, former President Ezer Weisman twice commuted his sentence, reducing it to just 11 years. The court cited "good behaviour" for freeing Shkolnik, who had served less than seven years of the original life prison term.
Last month another settler, Nahom Koreman, was sentenced to six months' community service for the murder of the Palestinian school child, Helmi Shousha, in the village of Housan near Bethlehem in 1996. Koreman appealed against the sentence, calling it harsh, which prompted the court to allow him to spend the six months helping at a West Jerusalem hospice.
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