So far, no mention at all of the Tel Aviv rally
I googled it, and found that the SF Chronicle gave it coverage, and some flyover papers. The WP had nothing. The "Boston Globe," the "Times" owned paper, ran this sob story.
Israeli raids take a toll on West Bank civilians
Casualties mount in hunt for militants
By Sa'id Ghazali and Dan Ephron, Globe Correspondents, 1/12/2004
NABLUS, West Bank -- Naim al-Araj doesn't bother fighting the insomnia. Instead, for three weeks now he has left his bed in the middle of each night, dressed himself, and walked to the cemetery of the Balata refugee camp to cry over his son Mohammed's grave.
Israeli troops shot the 6-year-old dead at the entrance to his home in Balata on Dec. 21, three days after troops invaded Nablus and the adjacent camps. Since then, 15 other Palestinians have been killed in the largest Israeli incursion in the West Bank in more than a year.
Israeli troops have spent much of that time moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, searching for militants in a city the army describes as a breeding ground for suicide terrorists.
But while at least one bomber has been caught and some weapons and explosives have been found, most casualties in the latest Israeli assault have been civilians. And all 180,000 residents of Nablus and its environs have been kept under curfew during the past three weeks.
"My pain is huge. . . . I lost my favorite boy," said Araj, showing guests at his home pictures taken several years ago of Mohammed playing at a Tel Aviv beach. "I used to take him [to Israel] for nice dinners at restaurants."
Araj, who lives next to the Balata cemetery, said Israeli troops had been raiding homes in the area the day his son was killed. A military official said the soldiers were attacked that day by Palestinians in Balata who threw stones and at least one bomb.
"The soldiers returned fire when someone threw an explosive device," the official said. "It's possible that in that burst of fire we hit the boy, but we're still checking the incident."
Israel says soldiers have tried to avoid harming civilians during the incursion, which saw 30 tanks rumble into Nablus, the biggest city in the West Bank. But army officials say they had no choice but to order troops into the area.
Two recent bombers from the Nablus area have pulled off suicide attacks in the Jewish state. A Palestinian woman killed 21 people at a restaurant in Haifa in October, and a man blew himself up last month at a bus stop near Tel Aviv, killing four Israelis. Another young bomber, whose brother was shot dead by Israeli troops during the current incursion, was killed yesterday when the belt of explosives he was wearing detonated prematurely.
"Nablus is the hottest and most dangerous town" in the West Bank, said a senior Israeli commander in the city, in an interview conducted by a pool reporter last week and made available to other journalists. "Most of the suicide bombers, most of the bombs, most of the ammunition is in Nablus."
The commander, whom the army spokesman's office barred reporters from naming, said Israel can get real-time intelligence on militants and the attacks they are planning only by having troops patrolling the city.
He said the army initiated the assault after getting information that three or four suicide bombers were about to head from Nablus to Israel. The army has caught at least 16 would-be bombers in recent months in the city, the commander said.
"The ones you hear about are the ones that explode. Every day there are ones that you don't hear about," he said, adding that six of the Palestinians killed in recent days were armed men.
But Abu Mujahed, a leading figure in the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in Nablus, disputed the information. The 42-year-old militant said the Israeli army killed only one fighter since entering Nablus three weeks ago. The rest of the casualties were civilians, he said.
"We knew that they were about to attack even before the tanks entered the city," said Abu Mujahed, whose group is affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"All the fighters disappeared. They hid themselves in many places -- in an abandoned well, in a garbage container, behind a crumbling wall."
He said Al Aqsa had no central leadership: "Some cells are funded by Hezbollah [Islamic militants] in Lebanon. Some Palestinian Authority officials tried to fund some groups. But we mainly rely on donations."
Around the Old City section of Nablus, where much of the fighting has centered in recent days, Al Aqsa is lauded in graffiti. "The people will protect the brigades," someone has scrawled on one wall. On another, next to a visual rendering of a masked militant, someone has written: "He prayed at dawn, then pulled out his pistol and went to the battlefield." Palestinians say killings of civilians bring new recruits to the ranks of militant groups like Al Aqsa and fuel the hatred. But Araj, who visits his 6-year-old son's grave every night, said that despite the hostility between Israelis and Palestinians, some soldiers were visibly upset by Mohammed's death.
Two days after he was killed, a squad entered the Araj home to conduct a search. When Araj showed the commanding officer Mohammed's bloody clothes, the Israeli recoiled.
"He started to cry," Araj said about the officer. "He ordered his soldier to leave the house, and they left."
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
