26 April - 2 May 2001
Issue No.531
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 26 April - 2 May 2001 Issue No.531 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Go, destroy and leave
The Palestinian uprising enters its eighth month with no signs of waning, despite increasing Israeli brutality. Khaled Amayreh reports from the occupied West Bank
As Israel commemorated the Holocaust and celebrated "independence day," its army continued to torment Palestinian civilians in a sustained effort to crush the uprising against Israeli military occupation. Despite renewed security talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA), the killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their homes and farms continued unabated.
In the past week, the Israeli army killed at least four Palestinians, including two children, an adolescent and a Palestinian security officer who died of wounds sustained last week during heavy Israeli bombardment of Khan Younis in the central Gaza Strip. Israeli snipers killed Bara'a Jalal Shaer, 10, as she was playing with friends near the Mintar crossing east of Gaza.
On 23 April, Israeli snipers killed 11-year-old Mohamed Muharib during a funeral procession for Force-17 officer Madhi Khalil Madhi, who died the previous day. Meanwhile, Hamza Obeid Oudeh, 16, was gunned down on 18 April in Rafah, on his way home from a private maths lesson, having been unable to attend school due to constant bombing and strafing of his neighbourhood by Israeli gunners.
In addition to the blood-letting, the Israeli army continued to make incursions into PA-controlled territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip. However, unlike the brief occupation of a Palestinian position in northern Gaza nearly 10 days ago, which drew strong international -- including American -- criticism, forcing a prompt Israeli withdrawal, the occupation army is now adopting a slightly different tactic, based on the formula "go, destroy, and leave."
This way, the Israeli leadership hopes tactical goals can be achieved without inviting a strong international reaction. Indeed, this has already paid off, especially in the southern half of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli troops entered PA-controlled territory twice this week, destroying Palestinian security installations and withdrawing immediately afterwards.
Meanwhile, the occupation army continued to intermittently bomb Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Earlier this week, an entire Palestinian family in Hebron narrowly escaped what could have been a terrible massacre. Israeli tanks and artillery bombarded residential homes throughout the town, home to 170,000 Palestinians, with one shell landing in the verandah of the Abedin family, ravaging their home and injuring everyone in the house.
"It was a miracle, a real miracle, that we were not killed. This is real terror carried out by true terrorists," said Ibrahim Abedin, who was injured by shrapnel, as were his wife and six children.
Israeli tanks fired on Bethlehem, Jericho and much of the Gaza Strip, damaging some houses and destroying others. The Israeli army routinely claims that the bombings are in reaction to Palestinian firing on Jewish settlements. This is disputed by many.
"Whenever they hear the sound of gunshot, even if it is 10km away, [Israeli soldiers] immediately start bombarding us with tanks, artillery and heavy machine guns," said Mustafa Abdel-Nabi Natshe of Hebron. "Their real aim is not to protect the settlers, but to kill the Palestinians and drive them away," he adds with frustration.
Such frustration, however, does not serve to drive Palestinians away from their towns and villages, but is rather pushing at least some of them to carry out more attacks against Israelis, even in the heart of Israel.
On Sunday 22 April, a 17-year-old Palestinian school boy with explosives strapped to his waist blew himself up near an Israeli bus in Kfar Saba, 15 miles north of Tel Aviv. He killed himself and an Israeli man and injured scores of other Israelis, civilians and soldiers alike. The following day, a car bomb blast injured four Israelis in what Israeli police described as a terrorist act. Hamas took responsibility for the first blast while the small military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took credit for the second.
The car-bomb attacks inside Israel are likely to increase as the Israeli army continues to narrow Palestinian horizons further in its effort to force the PA to accept Sharon's terms. Meanwhile, the hawkish Sharon government seems hell-bent on tampering with the extremely sensitive issue of Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
On Friday 20 April, scores of Israeli policemen armed with assault rifles mounted a show of force on the esplanade of the Islamic shrine. Israeli officials claimed the provocative measure was directed against "stone throwers." However, Palestinian waqf (religious endowment) officials charged that Israelis were only trying to test the limits of Muslim forbearance.
Last week, right-wing Israeli President Moshe Katsav suggested that Jews and Muslims "share" the Al-Haram Al-Sharif compound. Katsav said, "Why can't there be arrangements at the Al-Haram Al-Sharif similar to those at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron?" Katsav failed to mention that the "partition" of the Ibrahimi Mosque was instigated unilaterally by the Israeli army and neither Palestinians nor Muslims at large ever accepted the Jewish take-over of the mosque.
Al-Haram Al-Sharif is the third holiest shrine in Islam after Mecca and Madina in Saudi Arabia. Muslim officials have repeatedly warned that any Jewish encroachment on the holy site would spark a conflagration throughout the Middle East which no government would be able to put out. Muslim warnings, however, are unlikely to deter Israeli extremists, who enjoy the support of the Sharon government and the Israeli establishment, from proceeding with their ominous designs against the Islamic shrine. A showdown appears to be in the offing.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page