Sharon's campaign trail
Khaled Amayreh reports on Israel's reinvasion of the West Bank
With opinion polls forecasting his reelection on 28 January, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is showing no signs of altering his policy in the Palestinian territories. This week, the Israeli premier ordered his army to launch yet another invasion of all major Palestinian towns in the West Bank, save the small oasis-town of Jericho.
Among the towns reinvaded was Bethlehem, which Sharon himself had agreed in the summer to hand over to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as part of an agreement that was also supposed to lead to the Israeli army's withdrawal from other West Bank towns and villages.
A fleet of Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) rumbled into the town and surrounding villages and refugee camps on 21 November, ostensibly in retaliation for the suicide bombing of a bus in West Jerusalem a day earlier in which 10 Israelis were killed and some 30 others were injured.
The bomber, 23-year-old Nael Abu-Hilayel, is from the town Dura, 12 miles south-west of Hebron, but his family had moved to Bethlehem a few months earlier.
Upon entering the town, which had not witnessed any serious incidents of violence for months, the occupation forces imposed a strict curfew on its estimated 80,000 inhabitants, conducted house- to-house searches for wanted persons, rounded up dozens of men and dynamited at least seven homes belonging to the families of suspected guerrillas and resistance fighters.
The recapture of the Church of the Nativity and the adjacent Manger Square, which the Israeli army declared a closed military zone, comes exactly one month before Christmas. The townspeople now fear that this year's Christmas may well be a repeat of last year's when Israeli tanks wreaked havoc on the city, killing scores of civilians and vandalising homes, streets, public buildings, as well as virtually wiping out the tourist industry upon which Bethlehem's economic life in large part depends.
Bethlehem was not alone in reexperiencing Israel's pre-election brutality. Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Nablus and Hebron have all been attacked, terrorised and vandalised by thousands of Israeli troops, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships.
In each of these towns, the Israeli army reimposed the punitive open-ended lockdown, rendering the month of Ramadan a nightmare.
The curfew, as the collective imprisonment of Palestinians in their homes is euphemistically referred to by official Israeli discourse, carries its own set of dangers for civilians.
This week, at least five more Palestinians, including three children, were gunned down by trigger-happy soldiers rampaging through the streets of West Bank towns in APCs.
On 25 November, eight-year-old Jihad Faqih was walking along Faisal Street in downtown Nablus. When he saw an APC racing in his direction, the second grader reportedly tried to flee into a nearby alley. However, a burst of machine-gun bullets proved faster than his feet. He died on the spot.
Twelve-year-old Omar Qudsi met the same fate on 20 November in the centre of Tulkarm, as did 12-year-old Abdullah Arafat Al- Natshe in Hebron two days later.
The Israeli army claimed the children were killed because they violated the curfew and had been hurling stones at Israeli tanks.
