Issue No. 598
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8 - 14 August 2002 Issue No. 598 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Collective catastrophe
Nablus's 200,000 residents face humanitarian catastrophe, as Israel invades and strangulates the West Bank's largest town
The Israeli army embarked on a fresh reign of terror this week -- this time targeting Nablus, the largest town in the West Bank, Khaled Amayreh reports from Hebron.
On 2 August, thousands of Israeli troops, backed by some 180 tanks and armoured personnel carriers swept into the already paralysed city. Before these raids Nablus had been reeling from a suffocating and uninterrupted curfew that has lasted 38 days. Nablus's 200,000 inhabitants are on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe as the economy and basic services lie in shambles.
Israel's declared pretext for the invasion was to "arrest suspected terrorists" and "destroy bomb factories".
However, the aim behind this newest campaign seems to be the punishment of the Palestinian civilian population for the marked upsurge in attacks on Israeli targets in recent weeks.
The 31 July explosion at Jerusalem's Hebrew University left seven people dead, including two Israelis and five Americans. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for the 22 July midnight air strike by an Israeli F-16 warplane on an apartment building in Gaza, in which the resistance group's military leader Salah Shehada and 14 other civilians, including nine children, were killed. Hamas expressed "profound sorrow" for the death of the American students -- saying "our struggle and resistance are directed against Israel not the United States".
In the village of Salem, at approximately 2am, Israeli occupation soldiers shot and killed Amjad Abdel-Hadi Jebour in front of his family. According to an investigation by Al-Haq, a well respected human rights organisation based in Ramallah, Israeli troops entered the village during the early hours of 2 August for the purpose of arresting "militant activists". Soldiers knocked on the door of Mohamed, a neighbour of Jebour's, and forced him to summon Jebour. Jebour came to the doorway of his home at which time Israeli soldiers, using a search light, ordered him to take off his clothes to prove that he was not carrying a weapon or explosives. The 31-year-old Islamist was then handcuffed and blindfolded and made to stand next to an army jeep approximately 10 metres from his building. At the jeep, an Israeli solider fired a single shot in the back of Jabour's head -- killing him instantly in full view of his wife and children. The Israeli army claimed that he sought to flee, an allegation the eyewitness Mohamed described as a "complete lie".
The Israeli army has reimposed a stringent siege on Nablus and other Palestinian population centres in the central and northern parts of the West Bank.
In Nablus, Israeli troops began house-to-house searches throughout the town during which Palestinian civilians were often indiscriminately beaten and humiliated. In the process, more than 200 young men were arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and made to stand for many hours in midday heat before they were whisked into army trucks which drove them to the notorious Ufer detention camp.
The manner in which young Palestinians are arrested is very telling in itself. "Israeli soldiers first come pounding on the door, then if no body opens within one or two minutes, they blow up the door using magnetic explosives, then the soldiers storm the homes while everybody is asleep; then they aim their rifles at everybody, terrorising men, women and children alike," said Mohamed Shakhsir, a local shopkeeper.
Ghassan Hamdan, a medical doctor, described the situation in Nablus. "The soldiers are everywhere in the city, and they are preventing ambulances from reaching the sick and wounded... we all remember what they did last time and how many people were killed and everyone is terrified as it looks like they are doing the same thing again."
As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, the Israeli army was continuing its seige of Nablus. The troops had destroyed at least eight homes in and around Nablus, some with bulldozers and others using dynamite. In nearly all of the cases, the soldiers gave residents only five minutes to leave their homes, forbidding them from taking any furniture or possessions.
Meanwhile, army bulldozers continue to work round-the- clock, destroying what remained intact of Nablus's old town, which housed many historic mosques and churches. The mayor of Nablus, Ghassan Al-Shaka'a says the renewed siege is aimed at destroying the city's infrastructure and consequently starving its inhabitants in the hope that this would lead to a mass revolt. "The Israelis have changed tactics... instead of tanks they have imposed sieges and curfews on our cities to destroy the economic infrastructure. They believe the reaction will be chaos, an explosion towards the Palestinian Authority. I have told them many times, be careful, the explosion could be directed against you."
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