Editor’s
note:
Much is going on outside the attention of the media.
There is a sense of despair crushing Israelis and
Palestinians. Many believe they should just go on
killing each other until they grow exhausted. This is
actually the American policy presently in operation.
Behold…the twin pillars of despair. Of course this
policy will not work in the long run. The region will
not go quietly into a new era.
----------------------------------------------------
Violent invasions and suicide bombings - by Mika
Minio-Paluello
The Israeli invasion and siege of Nablus city ended two
weeks ago now (Wed Jan 7), with a return to the nightly
machine gun fire from the mountains, daily
mini-incursions, and deadly proddings by jeeps and the
occasional tank.
As families attempted to return to their daily routine,
the residue of the invasion was visible everywhere: new
shaheed "martyr") posters on the walls, freshly-laid
pavements torn up by tanktracks and an atmosphere of
fear based on the belief that the soldiers would return
any day. Despite invading first Balata Camp and then
Nablus city, placing 180,000 people under curfew and
ransacking hundreds of homes, Israeli forces failed to
catch any of the men they claimed to be searching for.
With the invasion competing with the horrific Iranian
earthquake, aircrashes, Sharon's speeches and the
Christmas holiday, media coverage was minimal, in
Israeli, international, Arab and even Palestinian media,
adding to the Nablus perception of abandonment by the
world.
Meanwhile, the number of Palestinians murdered reached
nineteen, after a boy in his early teens was gunned down
on his way home after collecting scrap iron, and a raid
on the Al-Qassas house in Rafidia neighborhood. As the
Israeli army were beginning to pull out of the city on
Tue Jan 6, they received information from a Palestinian
collaborator that Ibrahim Atari, an Al-Aqsa Martyrs'
Brigade activist, was sheltering there.
After the family had left the home, Atari tried to leave
the building to give himself up. Rather than arrest him
however, the Israeli soldiers apparently preferred him
dead, as they filled his body with bullets. Abdul al-Qassas,
the father of the house, was dragged over to the body.
The soldiers screamed at him, demanding to know who the
now-dead Atari was, and why he was in Al-Qassas's house.
Apparently his answer of 'I don't know.' wasn't good
enough, as the soldiers shot him in the leg, the stomach
and the chin. They left after he had bled to death.
The violent impact of the invasion on Nablus continues
to kill people even after the soldiers pulled back to
their mountain-top watchpoints and the 'stop points'
(stopping is more common than 'checking') surrounding
the city. The Sunday afterwards (Jan 11), 19-year-old
Bilal Al-Masri blew himself up near Qalqilya, presumably
on his way to an Israeli town outside the Occupied
Territories.
It's not hard to work out what might have compelled
Bilal to do this. The Saturday before, his 15-year-old
brother Amjad was killed throwing stones. That same
afternoon, soldiers shot his 18-year-old cousin Mohammed
in front of his eyes as he carried Amjad to his grave.
It is not uncommon that young Palestinians who have lost
relatives decide to blow themselves and others up.
Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old lawyer from Jenin, blew
herself up in the Haifa Maxim restaurant in early
October, killing 21, including four children. Her
younger brother Fedi was executed by an Israeli
undercover unit in front of her, despite her trying to
protect him. On June 12th, three days before Fadi's
wedding, the family was in the courtyard of the house.
Salah Jaradat, Fadi's cousin and a member of Islamic
Jihad, came to visit his pregnant wife, Ismath, and
their two-year-old son, who were living with the family.
The events that occurred in the next few minutes were
described by Hanadi in an interview to Al-Arab al-Yum,
which was published the day after her brother was
killed: "We were sitting together. Everything was
normal, natural. Salah, who was a wanted person, hadn't
seen his wife and his son in a long time. The army
pursued him all the time on the charge that he was a
fighter, a commander in the Jerusalem Battalions [of
Islamic Jihad].
They went into his house in Silat al-Harthiya many
times, looking for him. He started to play with his boy
and kiss him. We were drinking coffee. Then we saw a
white car with Arab license plates drive up slowly and
stop next to the house. I thought they were friends of
Fadi. Suddenly two men got out of the car and started
shooting at Salah. I saw Salah lying on the ground. Then
suddenly another car pulled up and the people inside
opened fire.
"We all lay on the ground. Salah's wife threw herself on
the boy to protect him. My brother Fadi fell on the
floor and I saw that he was bleeding. I grabbed his hand
and started to drag him to the sofa, to hide him behind
it. I was screaming, 'Fadi! Salah!' I heard Fadi barely
speaking, saying 'Save me. Save me.' Then one of the
soldiers came and attacked me. He threw me with force
onto the floor, pulled Fadi's hand out of mine and told
me, 'Get into the house or I'llkill you.' I shouted to
them, 'Leave me alone, I want to save my brother. He's
wounded, bleeding.'
"Fadi was still breathing. Salah lay motionless. I saw
that he had been hit in the head. Three of the soldiers
spoke fluent Arabic. One of them asked me, 'Where is
Fadi's weapon?' I said, 'I don't know. He doesn't even
have a weapon.' I saw my brother lying there. 'Allahu
akbar aleikum, he'll die,' I said. They made me lie down
facing the ground and one of them said, 'You bitch, you
terrorist, we'll kill you along with them.'
"They aimed their weapons at my head. Then one of them
said to the others, 'Drag them [Salah and Fadi] and put
one on top of the other.' Those words drove me out of my
mind. I said, 'You'reterrorists, dogs, leave them
alone.' I tried to get up, but they knocked me down
again. They dragged Salah and Fadi a few meters and then
shot them again. They killed them in cold blood.
"The purpose of that operation was to liquidate the
fighter Salah and his cousin Fadi. They could have
arrested them, because they surprised us and surrounded
the house, so none of us could have escaped. Why did
they start shooting straight off? Even after Fadi was
wounded they could have arrested him, but they went on
shooting to make sure he was dead. When we got the
bodies back, I saw that they shot him in every part of
his body.
That completely finished my father. It paralyzed him. He
was getting ready for his son's wedding, and instead he
was informed that Fadi was dead. That's a blow he will
not recover from. I am very sad. Since the moment I saw
my brother's blood, I have felt very bad. But the goal
of liberating Palestine is bigger and more important
than my private pain."
The next and last attack inside the 1948 borders was on
December 27th, at the Geha Junction, killing three
soldiers and one young woman. The Israeli government,
military, newspapers and society counted "81 days of
quiet", while Palestinians experienced regular murder,
injuries and closure.
Shehad Hanani, the 21-year-old from Beit Furik who blew
himself up at Geha Junction in the name of the leftist
PFLP, had lost his older brother, Fadi Hanani --
executed on a Nablus rooftop ten days earlier. The
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy describes how the "almost
universal unemployment, poverty, endless siege and
humiliations of life inside a prison" experienced by the
people of Beit Furik could drive Shehad to kill himself.
Incidently, this attack made a break from the PFLP
policy of suicide attacks only inside the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, although it still targeted
soldiers. The only previous PFLP 'operation' inside
Israel/the 1948 borders was the exection of far-right
Israeli Tourism Minister Ze'evi after PFLP leader Abu
Ali Mustapha had been executed by an Apache.
Despite Shehad's suicide attack, killing of three
soldiers and murder of the girl emanating from Beit
Furik (nearby, yet cut off from Nablus) and the PFLP,
the Israeli military cynically used it to justify the
expansion of their invasion to the whole of Nablus,
where they claimed to be after Al-Asqa activists.
It is vital for people to ask themselves 'why' some
Palestinians are prepared to blow themselves and others
up. Once the background conditions are known, it's not
very difficult to understand. Talk of rabid, vicious and
primitive Palestinians is ridiculous - the 'revenge'
motive fits nicely into the moral system of the average
US action blockbuster film.
The sweeping condemnation that followed Lib Dem MP Jenny
Tonge's well-qualified comments that if she were a
Palestinian living under occupation she "might just
consider becoming" a suicide bomber, was obvious, given
the lack of actual freedom of speech and the regime we
live under in Britain and the US.
Yet it is still sad that statements such as this, which
are vital to any decent discussion of the situation, are
branded beyond the political pale and punishable. The
racism becomes obvious when political pundits defend the
recent Israeli invasion of Nablus, with the accompanying
murders, collective punishment, humiliation and
imprisonment of 180,000 people as necessary for security
or unavoidable collatoral damage.
Mika Minio-Paluello volunteers with the International
Solidarity Movement in Nablus.
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