Despite Bush's Call, Israel Pummels West Bank Cities
By JAMES BENNET with JOHN KIFNER
The New York Times
April 7, 2002
NABLUS, West Bank — Ferocious fighting raged here and elsewhere on the West Bank today as Israel pressed its wide-ranging offensive against Palestinian cities despite President Bush's call for a withdrawal.
Indeed, Israeli officials were openly taking Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's schedule for his emergency Middle East trip as giving them a grace period of at least a week to finish what they began. He will arrive here at the end of next week.
"We are finishing the operation we started," said Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
But today, Mr. Bush ratcheted up the pressure on Israel, calling on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw his forces "without delay."
Mr. Sharon made no direct comment on Mr. Bush's latest call that he withdraw his troops, following his usual practice of not reacting in public to such speeches. But a senior official reiterated that the sweep through Palestinian cities "will continue until such a time as we are assured that terrorism is uprooted and the perpetrators are arrested."
The continuing battles came as Arab foreign ministers met in emergency session in Cairo to address the mounting crisis, protests spread across the Arab world and Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain met at the president's ranch in Texas to discuss the situation.
It was not yet clear whether Secretary Powell would meet with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Asked today whether the meeting would take place, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the American envoy who is trying to broker a cease-fire, said, "I don't know. yet."
In Nablus, two American-made Apache helicopter gunships circled overhead this afternoon, pouring rockets and gunfire at the casbah, or old city, a closed, twisting stone labyrinth that has become a redoubt for Palestinian fighters. At one point the helicopters unleashed a half-dozen rockets near or into the casbah.
The fighting here and in the nearby city of Jenin pitted Israeli tanks and armor against Palestinians hiding among buildings on city streets and in refugee camps. Palestinian fighters were handing out explosive suicide-bomber-type belts, and at times the fighters rushed in to try to blow up Israeli soldiers, said Jamal Abu al-Haija, a Hamas leader in the Jenin refugee camp. Palestinian officials were warning this evening of a "massacre" in Nablus.
Nablus and the refugee camps on its edges, Balata and Askar, have long been strongholds of Palestinian militancy. Balata, which Israeli forces were reported attacking late this afternoon, is the birthplace of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Mr. Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement, which in recent weeks has moved to the forefront of suicide bombers. Palestinians say they have rigged the narrow, twisting streets and tunnels of the casbah with bombs and booby traps.
At Balata, the Israeli Army was calling through loudspeakers for residents to come out with their hands up and warning that otherwise their houses would be destroyed, an area resident said by telephone.
In Ramallah, hospital officials said that a 55-year-old baker was shot dead as he tried to reach his bakery to make bread in case the curfew was lifted.
In Gaza early today, an Israeli soldier was killed in a clash as gunmen tried to enter a Jewish settlement, an army statement said. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility and said two of its members were killed.
On the tense northern border with Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas fired mortar rounds and rockets into Israel, which retaliated with artillery. Syrian troops in Lebanon have been redeploying to the north and east for the last two days, apparently to get away from any possible retaliation.
In Tel Aviv, close to 10,000 Israelis rallied at the Defense Ministry against the military offensive in the West Bank, calling for a withdrawal from the area and a resumption of peace talks. Organized by a coalition of peace groups, the demonstration was the largest of its kind since the start of the current Palestinian uprising more than 18 months ago.
Speakers said the deepening Israeli military involvement in the West Bank and the hardship it was causing for Palestinians would only breed more violence against Israel.
"They took our just war against terrorism and turned it into a war of occupation," said Yael Dayan, a lawmaker from the Labor Party. "This war of occupation is not our war."
Stickers distributed in the crowd said: "Get out of the territories. Stop the war."
In Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank, the Israelis have seized the high ground, taking over buildings, hanging camouflage netting over the windows and parking armored personnel carriers outside. The city, — nicknamed "mountain of fire" in Arabic — actually sits in a kind of bowl, its buildings climbing up steep surrounding hills.
As in Ramallah and other cities the Israelis have stormed, the streets are empty, the stores shuttered, the people staying inside their homes. The eerie silence is broken only by the grinding of the tanks' steel treads and the rattles and booms of gunfire. Here, too, cars were crushed on the street, run over by tanks. The door of a yellow sedan hung open today, shredded.
In a strange moment, two Arab shepherds herded dozens of sheep past the Israeli armor. A stray cat, similarly oblivious, ran under a tank.
As a journalist's car passed by on the empty streets, a woman cried through the bars of her window: "I have a six-month old baby with asthma. I don't know what to do." A man leaned over his balcony and shouted in German, "The Jews destroyed my car!"
Al Aksa said one of its members in Nablus, Jamil Aboudi, 22, strapped on a belt of explosives and blew himself up, injuring or killing four Israeli soldiers. On Friday, a main leader of the brigades, Nasser Awais, died when his explosive belt went off prematurely, said a spokesman for the group, Abu Mujahed.
At the Askar camp, four Palestinians were gunned down as they tried to plant explosives by the roadside, the army said.
The fighting was tough, too, at the refugee camp by Jenin, where the Palestinian gunmen are dug in and the army is using bulldozers to smash through houses to get to them.
At Al Razi hospital, just outside the Jenin camp, Dr. Ziad Ayaseh said hundreds of phone calls had come in saying there were dead and wounded lying on the street. The hospital also got a call from a woman giving birth and asking for help. But the staff could do nothing and the baby died. A wounded man, shot in the hand and stomach was brought to the hospital, Dr. Ayaseh said, and dropped about four yards from a hospital entrance. But Israeli soldiers in a tank nearby fired warning shots at hospital employees who tried to bring him in, and after more than two hours he bled to death, Dr. Ayaseh said.
The doctor said he also heard a frantic telephone call from the wife of a hospital employee, saying their home was being bulldozed.
"For God's sake, help us," the woman was reported as having said before fleeing to another house. " They're destroying the house on our heads." Dr. Ayaseh said he could see both houses being razed from a window.
The Israeli commander on the scene said it was a fight to the death. Palestinians calling out of the camp to news agencies reported dead and wounded on the streets and intense shelling by tanks and helicopter gunships throughout last night.
The Israeli Army said tonight that at least 14 Palestinians and 7 Israeli soldiers had been killed in the fighting in Jenin in the last 48 hours.
"They have their backs against the walls," the Israeli commander, Brig. Gen. Eyal Shien, told Israeli radio. "We trapped them in there, with the intention they should surrender. Those that don't surrender, we will kill them."
Both Israelis and Palestinians said that the Hamas leader who was behind the March 27 Passover suicide bombing, which killed 26 people and led to the Israeli military assault, died on Friday in a targeted killing in the town of Tubas. He was identified as Qeis Odwan, and he died when the house in which he was hiding with five others was riddled with fire from tanks and helicopters.
In Bethlehem, the standoff continued at the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square, where about 200 people, including gunmen, are barricaded. About 7:15 p.m., journalists on the roof of the Star Hotel, about a half mile away, heard a loud explosion and saw a fireball and smoke coming from the area of a market near Manger Square and said they could see Israeli tanks in motion.
It was difficult to ascertain many of the details of the fighting or the casualty figures because Israel has declared all of the areas in which the army is operating to be "closed military zones." Even when journalists have managed to slip inside the compound, their movements have been restricted by soldiers.
In Bethlehem, the journalists have been kept back around the Star Hotel, a distance through the narrow streets from Manger Square. A small group of journalists peering from the roof of Al Qasr Hotel said that tracer fire was directed their way, the bullets whistling nearby over their heads.
The question of how long the Israeli operation could continue despite American pressure has become a major subject of speculation in the Israeli press. Officials in the prime minister's office, however, have repeatedly insisted that the operation will run its course. "If we stop now and nothing happens, we are rewarding the terrorists," an official said. |
