Jewish Army begins Summary Executions - RAMALLAH, West Bank, 1 April

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday April 01, 2002 01:41 by irishhead

“Do you think the missiles will differentiate between me and any of my brothers here with me?

The Israeli Army yesterday launched a campaign of mass executions against Palestinians. At least 39 members of the Palestinian security forces in occupied Ramallah were killed in cold blood in two separate incidents.

Israeli Army begins summary executions
By Nazir Majally, Arab News Staff

//Arab News//MLN//IMC.org
http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=13940

RAMALLAH, West Bank, 1 April — Far from shying away from behavior that has made the world draw analogies between them and the Nazis who persecuted their Jewish brethren during the World War II, the Israeli Army yesterday launched a campaign of mass executions against Palestinians. At least 39 members of the Palestinian security forces in occupied Ramallah were killed in cold blood in two separate incidents. Once again, Israel’s economic, political and military backer, the United States, remained silent in the face of such outrage.

West Bank Preventive Security chief Jibril Rajoub told AFP: “The Israelis assassinated around 30 Palestinians last night in a building in central Ramallah. It was a collective assassination.”

Nine Palestinians were executed earlier in the morning. Palestinians said soldiers executed them in the Islamic Club and adjacent buildings. Four other Palestinians were shot dead by troops in clashes. The head of the hospital service told AFP yesterday the morgue in Ramallah’s central hospital is starting to overflow and doctors had to start putting two bodies in compartments designed for one.

The Israeli Army said it had arrested “several” foreigners who had defied its closure order on the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In other incidents two Palestinian activists blew themselves up killing 15 Israelis as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared a war saying a cease-fire would be possible once the campaign against the Palestinians had been completed. Israel also did not rule out the Palestinian leader being killed accidentally in clashes with its troops at his shattered headquarters.

It closed off Ramallah, ordering out all journalists. But speaking from inside the offices at his shattered compound, which Israeli tanks and troops entered on Friday, Arafat repeated he was ready to die and vowed never to surrender.

Palestinian officials earlier said they feared Arafat would be killed after what they said was an Israeli surge into the buildings housing his inner offices.

The first bomber who struck yesterday, a member of Izzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, detonated an explosive device in a crowded restaurant in the city of Haifa, killing at least 15 and injuring 35 others.

Police said the attacker walked into the restaurant and blew himself to pieces with an explosion that caved in the roof and reduced the interior to a tangle of metal and glass. Another bomber struck in the Jewish settlement of Efrat, south of the West Bank town of Bethlehem killing himself and injuring four people, settler sources said.

The Palestinian blew himself up near the medical center in the industrial section of the Jewish settlement. Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinians during a gunbattle in the Kadura refugee camp in Ramallah around noon yesterday, Israeli military sources said.

Earlier yesterday, Israeli soldiers shot dead two activists of Islamic Jihad near Tulkarm, after briefly entering the village of Saida before dawn.

The Israeli Army defied a chorus of world outrage to hint Arafat could be killed and after the attack announced the West Bank of city of Ramallah, where he is cornered, was a closed military area.

A US journalist was shot and wounded yesterday in Ramallah shortly after the Israeli announcement, two photographers on the scene told AFP. The correspondent for the Boston Globe daily, a US national, sustained bullet wounds in the back near Ramallah’s main square, they said.

He said he had told the United States that Palestinians needed international protection.

Asked about Israel’s assurances that it had no intention of harming him, the 72-year-old Palestinian Authority chief said: “Do you think the missiles will differentiate between me and any of my brothers here with me? This is a big Israeli lie.

“What I am facing is not important. More important is what my people are going through day and night. Yesterday they (the Israelis) assassinated nine people. The tanks are surrounding the hospitals and blocking access to the wounded,” he declared.

Soldiers operating within Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters waged gunbattles with the Palestinian leader’s guards, only meters from the room where Arafat had taken refuge with his aids, Palestinians said.

At least two guards were injured, one of them seriously. Soldiers continued entering building after building in Ramallah, mainly in the commercial city center and the Old City, to search for weapons and activists. They arrested more than 500 people, Palestinians said.

The Palestinian Chamber of Commerce in downtown Ramallah went up in flames, possibly after soldiers used explosives to break open its entrance, Palestinians said. Soldiers also entered a multiple-story building housing the Al-Jazeera Television and occupied one floor. Palestinians reported a lull in the fighting in Arafat’s Al Mukata’a headquarters yesterday afternoon. Israeli soldiers had earlier fired two stun grenades at or near Arafat’s office. The gunbattles took place only one or two rooms from Arafat, after soldiers moved into the dining room of Arafat’s office, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who was in close telephone contact with the Palestinian leader, told Al-Jazeera.

As the shooting took place, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Army Radio that Israel had no intention of harming Arafat. Israel told the Palestinians to evacuate all Palestinian security offices in the Gaza Strip, sources at the office of Gaza Strip public security chief Abdel Razik Al Majayda said.

Employees working for international aid organizations, including the Red Cross and the UN relief organization UNRWA, were asked to leave Gaza as soon as possible, sources in Gaza City added.

Some 20 tanks were also still besieging the headquarters of West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub, in the southern Ramallah suburb of Beitunya. In addition to Ramallah, tanks have reoccupied the West Bank town of Beit Jalla, south of Jerusalem. Sporadic shooting was reported in both towns.

In Tel Aviv, parliamentary speaker Avraham Burg said yesterday the Israeli government must speak out to tell its citizens where its current military campaign is going. “There is a lot of responsibility at the political level to tell the citizens where the military action is going. Today, there is absolutely no one saying where this is going,” he said.

Sharon in his brief televised address said: “Citizens of Israel: the state of Israel is at war, a war against terror,” while adding “We must fight this terrorism, in an uncompromising war to uproot these savages.”

Arab News
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