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Middle
East
By
G. Usher
Leila Katawi was woken up by a blast of gunfire and mosque
loudspeakers calling on Palestinians to "defend the camp".
Still in her nightgown, she crept on to the roof of her shelter
in Balata refugee camp. She died almost immediately - cut
down in a hail of bullets from an Israeli army base on Jarzim
mountain, overlooking the West Bank and the Palestinian city
of Nablus.
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She was
the first to die as Israeli army undercover squads, supported
by armour and helicopters, moved into the camp, which is home
to about 22,000 Palestinians. The second was to be Salah a-Din
Fraj, an armed activist from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement
and a father of five, killed in the gunfights throughout the
camp. The army raid was intended to arrest or kill fighters
belonging to the Al Aqsa Brigades, a group linked to Fatah.
The day before the group had claimed responsibility for two
armed attacks and a suicide bombing in Gaza and the West Bank,
leaving four Israelis dead. The army did not find its quarry.
In the words of Fatah leader Hussam Khader, Balata moved "as
a camp" to safeguard the fighters' sanctuary, pushing back
the invaders. Men fired Kalashnikov rifles, youths laid home-made
mines, and women and children threw stones. They defended themselves.
The army could not enter Balata even during the occupation.
It can't do so. The people will resist. The mood now really
is victory or death.
The battle for Balata was one episode in a bloody week for both
Palestinians and Israelis. In one week, 40 Palestinians and
11 Israelis have been killed. Of the Palestinian deaths, 21
were police officers, as Israel bombed and rocketed Palestinian
Authority security positions in Gaza and the West Bank in desperate
reprisal for the Palestinian attacks.
Of the Israelis, two were settlers, one was a police officer,
eight were soldiers and all were killed in the occupied territories.
This is evidence - some say - of a new Palestinian strategy
to concentrate attacks on the occupation rather than on civilians
inside Israel itself. If so, the implications for the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict could be far-reaching, The green line separating Israel
from Gaza and the West Bank is not just the territorial border
between the two peoples. It is also the moral border. When Palestinians
attack Israelis on Israeli side of the border, it can legitimately
be called terrorism. When they attack Israelis on Palestinian
side, it can legitimately be called national resistance.
In the West Bank the tactics are to ambush army checkpoints
("Symbols of Palestinian humiliation at the hands of the
occupation troops," according to Fatah West Bank leader
Marwan Barghouti) or dispatch suicide bombers deep into the
heart of Jewish settlements, the "facts" of national
dispossession and Israeli colonialism in the eyes of just about
every Palestinian. In the Gaza Strip the armed struggle is already
more developed, with Palestinian guerrillas firing mortars at
settlements and launching rudimentary rockets at military bases
and Israeli towns that line the Strip's border with Israel.
These are not the only resemblance's to Hezbollah's warfare
in Lebanon.
On Feb 14, Palestinian fighters sprayed machine-gun fire at
a bus convoy heading for Gaza's Netzarim settlement, causing
no injuries. A vast Merkava tank lumbered into position to counter-attack
and was ripped apart by an 80kg roadside bomb, killing three
Israeli soldiers. The Popular Resistance Committees claimed
responsibility for the ambush. Forged in the first months of
the uprising to defend Palestinian towns, villages and camps
in southern Gaza from army incursions, it is another grassroots
militia. It is made up of all the Palestinian factions, although
dominated by Fatah members.
Jamal Abu Samhandanah is one of the resistance committees' leaders.
Like the Al Aqsa Brigades - with whom he has "good relations"
- he typifies the "young guard" of Palestinian military
leaders who have come to the fore in the intifada. He is, the
"most wanted" Palestinian fighter in Gaza, accused
by Israel of being behind attacks on soldiers and settlers.
Samhandanah is unambiguous. "We are not against negotiations
if they realise our national goals of an Israeli withdrawal,
a Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967 and the right
of return. When those negotiations begin we will give up our
arms. But we won't surrender our guns for a CIA cease-fire so
we can resume security co-operation with Israel. Arafat can
believe in the American dream if he wants to. But for us and
for the Palestinian people the dream is over. It's as dead as
Oslo." |
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