18 - 24 April 2002
Issue No.582
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 April 2002 Issue No.582 |
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Murders and lies
A Gestapo-like Israeli army continues its atrocities designed to terrorise Palestinians in the West Bank. Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem
Encouraged by brazen American collusion and feeble international reactions, Israel moved to consolidate its reoccupation of the West Bank, inflicting still more death and havoc on 3.5 million beleaguered Palestinians.
DOWN THE BARREL OF A GUN: What can Palestinian children dream of, if not of martyrdom, when all they know of life is the misery inflicted by Israeli occupation and abetted by Arab inaction? (photo: AP)
And far from withdrawing from the recently reoccupied towns, the Israeli occupation army actually re-entered Tulkarm in the northern part of the West Bank on 16 April, placing the large town under curfew and rounding up hundreds of citizens.
Palestinian sources said more than 80 Israeli tanks swept in from several directions in the early hours of Tuesday, firing into the air and on the deserted streets.
Although the Israeli army described the operation as "limited," local citizens voiced understandable fears of possible massacres in light of the genocidal atrocities the Israeli army has committed in Jenin and Nablus.
The Israeli army continued to adopt a modus operandi of bullying, coercion, collective punishment, harassment and brash terror against innocent civilians as they occupied Tulkarm, prompting the London-based human rights organisation, Amnesty International, to accuse the Israeli army of launching conventional war on a civilian population.
"The military operations we have investigated appear to be carried out not for military purposes, but to harass, humiliate, intimidate and harm the Palestinian population. Either the Israeli army is extremely ill-disciplined or it has been ordered to carry out acts that violate the laws of war," said Amnesty International in a lengthy report on the Israeli rampage in the West Bank issued on 14 April.
On 5 March, Ariel Sharon declared that "the Palestinians must be hit hard, and we must cause them losses and victims so that they feel the heavy price." These words have been translated into gruesome reality on Palestinian streets.
Meanwhile, most Palestinians are struggling to comprehend the enormity of what has happened, as efforts to recover the bodies of the dead from under the rubble of what was once their homes continued, often amid the provocative sounds of Israeli gunfire, aimed at terrorising the people and keeping them indoors.
In the devastated old town of Nablus, which Israeli tank artillery reduced to a huge pile of rubble akin to Berlin in 1945, the stench of decomposed bodies, some protruding from the debris of destroyed homes, wafts all over town.
Rescuers and volunteers at the site speak of a human catastrophe transcending reality, contending that what happened to the old town equalled the effect of a major earthquake measuring eight degrees on the Richter scale. The number of innocent Palestinians who perished during the Israeli army's indiscriminate onslaught against the defenceless city remains uncertain.
What is certain, though, is that hundreds of homes were destroyed by sustained artillery fire that lasted eight days, with numerous civilians, including entire families, killed and buried under the rubble of their own homes. Abdualla Shuaibi, 68, and his wife, Shams, 65, lost eight members of their family when an Israeli bulldozer clawed the second floor of their home, bringing the building down on its 10 occupants.
The couple, who survived by hiding in a dark small room for eight days, had this macabre account of their ordeal.
"On the eighth day, my wife said: 'Today is our last. We are going to die today,'" said Shuaibi. "I started to tell her to forgive me, that we were going to die, that we had no hope."
As the Shuaibis began reciting the Muslim pronouncement of faith -- "there is no god but God, and Mohamed is his Messenger" -- they heard voices telling them not to be afraid and that somebody was trying to rescue them.
"I felt like I had died and was brought back to life," said the distraught Shuaibi, after he and his wife were retrieved "from among the dead."
But the Shuaibis are likely to spend the rest of their lives in mourning for the eight members of their immediate family who perished under the rubble.
Indeed, as rescuers dug through the debris, the extent of the tragedy unfolded. There was Shuaibi's brother, Omar and his daughters, Fatima and Abir, and son, Samir. In the next room lay the dust-covered bodies of Samir's pregnant wife, Nabila, and the couple's three small sons, Abdullah, Azzam and Anas.
In callous reaction to the carnage, the Israeli army sought to deflect blame by claiming that Shuaibi's home was located near a bomb factory.
Neighbours dismissed the allegation as "a wicked lie from wicked criminals." "The Jews are like the Nazis, they'd rather blame the victims than admit their crimes," said one neighbour who also lost three members of his family.
Having finished off their dirty work in major Palestinian towns, the Israeli army this week moved to the Palestinian countryside, killing scores of innocent people and destroying numerous buildings, all under the dubious rubric of "fighting terror."
In Dura, 12 kilometres south of Hebron, Israeli troops continued to impose a curfew on the small town of 25,000 for the second consecutive week. The invading troops killed at least four people, including two unsuspecting civilians who were leaving a mosque after finishing the dawn prayer.
Referring to the incident, the Israeli state-run radio, a mouthpiece for the Israeli army, announced that "two Palestinians were killed in a clash with IDF troops."
The same pattern of murders and lies was repeated when trigger happy Israeli troops, some taking positions on strategic rooftops, shot dead a woman and a man in cold blood in the town of Dahiriya, eight kilometres south-west of Dura.
According to eyewitnesses, the woman, Basma Isa Qeisiya, was killed as she ventured to fetch a bucket of water from a cistern outside her home. The man, Iskandar Sa'ada, was shot dead as he stepped outside his home to collect his child lest he be killed by Israeli snipers.
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