Israeli forces arrest hundreds in Ramallah
Move comes as suicide bomber hits Tel Aviv
By Anthony Shadid, Globe Staff, Globe Correspondent, 3/31/2002
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Backed by tanks and armored
personnel carriers, Israeli soldiers stormed building after
building yesterday around this fear-gripped city and rounded
up hundreds of Palestinians, while doctors delivered food,
water, and medicine to people trapped with Yasser Arafat in his
besieged headquarters.
Meanwhile, a
Palestinian suicide
bomber struck in
an upscale district
in Tel Aviv, a day
after Israel's
incursion into
Ramallah, killing
himself and
wounding at least
30 Israelis. The
blast, which
occurred as families
were coming to
cafes and
restaurants at the end of the Jewish Sabbath, carpeted the
avenue with shards of glass from the windows of the small cafe.
The bombing, the third in four days, was claimed by the Al
Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group that pledges loyalty to Arafat's
Fatah faction and had vowed on Friday to respond to Israel's
offensive with attacks on soldiers and civilians.
President Bush, in his first remarks since the Israeli offensive
began on Friday, signaled his support for Israel's response to
continued Palestinian suicide bombings, adding that Israel
must keep in mind that whatever move it makes ''must be an
avenue toward a peaceful settlement.'' The president also
called on Arafat to do more to quell the bombings, a demand
that Palestinians dismissed because of Arafat's isolation at the
hands of Israeli soldiers.
''Chairman Arafat needs to do a lot more. I truly believe that,''
Bush said at his Texas ranch. ''I think he needs to stand up
and condemn, in Arabic, these attacks.''
Arab and European countries, however, expressed concern
that Israel's offensive would escalate the violence, and
demanded that Israel obey a UN resolution, approved yesterday
with support from the United States, that called on Israel to
withdraw from Ramallah.
A Palestinian doctor said there were wounded people inside
the office, but they refused to leave, fearing that Israeli soldiers
would arrest them. He said Arafat was in high spirits, and
aides compared his ordeal to when Israeli forces - under then
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon - targeted the Palestinian leader
in Beirut 20 years ago.
''I thought he'd be tired and drained, but he seemed incredibly
on top of things,'' said Dr. Hossam Sharkawi, a Red Crescent
physician who stayed in the compound for nearly two hours.
''He spoke about never losing. It was pretty amazing, his high
spirits.''
Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, meanwhile, launched an attack
on disputed territory in northern Israel. That was followed by
Israeli missile strikes on Hezbollah units, but Israeli officials
said they did not plan to take further action against them.
Protests erupted across the Middle East over Arafat's isolation
inside a windowless office cut off from electricity and telephone
service.
Israeli forces continued with their occupation of Ramallah,
which they launched early Friday in response to a Palestinian
suicide bombing that killed 22 Israelis at a Passover
celebration in the coastal city of Netanya.
Israel has said it does not plan to kill Arafat or to remain in
Ramallah for an extended period of time, a position restated
yesterday by Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer. But the
defense minister told Israeli television that Israeli forces had
not finished their work ''against the infrastructure of terror in
Ramallah'' and that tanks had surrounded the headquarters of
Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank.
Additional Israeli forces and armor also entered the city of Beit
Jala, near Bethlehem.
In Ramallah, dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers
patrolled the city for a second day, tearing up roads, knocking
down stone walls, smashing at least a dozen cars, and backing
up soldiers who moved house to house in a search for
militants.
In a gun battle that lasted more than an hour, Israeli soldiers
killed five Palestinian policemen holed up on the third floor of
a bank building. Hours later, the men lay in pools of blood,
their bodies slumped together against the walls of the small
room.
Three men appeared to have been shot at close range in the
head; one of them had two bullet wounds to the back of his
skull. Blood and bullet holes about 3 feet high lined the walls
behind them. Palestinian doctors said the men appeared to
have been kneeling before being killed, and they accused
Israeli soldiers of executing the men.
''They were shot point-blank,'' said Mohammed Awad, a
32-year-old paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society. ''This is an execution.''
The Israeli military said the men were killed in an intense
exchange of fire at close range inside the building, and said
two Israeli soldiers were also wounded in the gun battle.
''It wasn't an execution,'' an Israeli military spokesman said. ''If
they hadn't opened fire, it probably wouldn't have happened.''
A Palestinian-American journalist, Maher Shalabi, said Israeli
soldiers used him as a human shield as they searched two
other floors. A military spokesman rebutted that allegation.
''We escorted him outside and to another place as he wished,''
he said.
In the morning, over loudspeakers, the Israeli military ordered
Palestinians between the ages of 14 and 40 to come out of
their homes and gather in a school. At least 100 were
blindfolded, and their hands were tied behind their backs.
Since the start of the operation, 145 Palestinians in Ramallah
have been detained, Israeli officials said. Among the detainees,
Palestinians said, was Abdel-Karim Oweis, a leader of the
al-Aqsa Brigades whom Israeli forces have tried to kill at least
twice. Israeli forces have killed 12 Palestinians during the
Ramallah incursion, including three civilians. Palestinians
have killed two Israeli soldiers.
At Arafat's compound, bulldozers punched at least six holes in
the wall. Tanks were parked in the streets and in a courtyard
that led to Arafat's office, where dozens of Palestinians were
still holed up. Throughout the day, soldiers ran across the
courtyard and took cover, although the fighting had subsided
dramatically since Friday's pitched battles. Other soldiers sat
glumly behind a desk in an office building whose front wall
had been knocked down by an armored bulldozer. Three
Palestinian flags still flew over the compound's buildings.
The Israeli military displayed a cache of weapons it said it had
found at the compound, ''under the eyes of the chairman of
the Palestinian Authority.'' They said the weapons - mortars,
sniper rifles, and grenades - were forbidden in areas under his
control.
In the afternoon, Israeli forces allowed in a convoy of six
Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances, which brought boxes of
bottled water, bread, cheese, cigarettes, and medicine to Arafat
and the other Palestinians inside.
Arafat, who met with a small group of French and Italian
delegates, denounced what he called Israel's ''terrorist, racist
actions'' backed by US-made weapons. ''I appeal to the
international community to stop this aggression against our
people, this military escalation, this killing,'' he told Reuters
television.
Across Ramallah, a once-bustling city of 200,000 people that
serves as the Palestinians' economic and political center,
thousands of residents hunkered down indoors. Some
contended that their food was running out and feared the
Israelis would stay for weeks, even months. On one wall,
someone had scrawled: ''Bush plus Sharon equals the axis of
evil.''
''Israel is not fighting the Palestinian Authority; it's fighting the
Palestinian people. They call us the terrorists, but if we're the
terrorists, it was the Israelis who taught us,'' said Salah Totah,
33, a Palestinian-American.
The fear that has stoked Israeli demands for revenge and
forced them to avoid cafes, buses, and shops was fed further by
the Tel Aviv bombing. The man, who carried the bomb in a
suitcase, was identified as a 21-year-old from Nablus in the
West Bank.
Tables and chairs were strewn across the sidewalk and into the
roadway. Some windows on the opposite side of the four-lane
street also were shattered. Israelis gathered near the scene,
chanting ''Peres is guilty'' and ''The Left are traitors,''
condemnations of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and parties
in the Parliament that advocate renewed negotiations with
Arafat.
Near the border of the West Bank, two Palestinians on their
way to carry out a suicide bombing were killed - one by Israeli
police, the other when the bomb exploded. An Israeli
policeman was also killed. The Al Aqsa Brigades said it sent the
men.
Protests over Israel's invasion of Ramallah erupted in Egypt,
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Bahrain. Jordan, a US ally,
warned that the Middle East was being pushed into an
''atmosphere of war'' just days after Arab leaders at a summit
in Lebanon offered Israel peace under a proposal put forward
by Saudi Arabia.
Charles Radin and Susan Milligan of the Globe Staff and
Globe correspondent Said al-Ghazali contributed to this report.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 3/31/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. |
