MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/19: The following three insightful articles from The Independent tody and a summary from Palestine Monitor in occupied Palestine:

Attempts by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to crush Palestinian violence by adopting still harsher military tactics came to nought last night, after guerrillas in the Gaza Strip fired more mortars into Israel, and one of the worst battles for months erupted on the edge of Bethlehem.

A day after causing a furore by reoccupying several square kilometres of the Gaza Strip ­ and then withdrawing under international pressure ­ Israel found itself back at square one last night after five Palestinian mortars fell close to a kibbutz inside Israel.

At the same time, the hills of Jerusalem echoed as the Israeli army fired tank shells, grenades and heavy machineguns into the Palestinian village of Beit Jala, the source of Palestinian shooting attacks on a nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo, on the southern edge of Jerusalem.

The new round of violence came as Mr Sharon faced mounting criticism at home for capitulating to American pressure by pulling out of a patch of northern Gaza, seized early on Tuesday. Earlier yesterday, the Israeli army went back into the Gaza Strip for more demolition work, sending a tank and bulldozers into Rafah, in southern Gaza, to flatten a Palestinian police station, which it said was a suspected source of gunfire. The troops reportedly withdrew after 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials were scrambling to persuade angry right-wing critics and Jewish settlers that Tuesday's withdrawal from the newly-seized part of the Gaza Strip was not the result of objections from the US, even though it came after what was by far the harshest criticism of Israel so far by the Bush administration.

Embarrassed by what seemed an abrupt volte-face, aides to Mr Sharon insisted yesterday that the government had earlier decided to leave the territory, at Beit Hanoun in north-eastern Gaza, before the US publicly condemned Israel's action. Officials said the seizure of the land was to stop it being used for mortar attacks on Israel. Last night's mortars were thought to have been fired from the same area.

Palestinians fired mortars at a settlement in the Gaza Strip and a farming village in Israel early today, drawing Israeli return fire that seriously wounded a supporter of the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The renewed mortar fire came despite two Israeli incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas of Gaza that were aimed at stopping such attacks, and left Prime Minister Ariel Sharon open to criticism from many quarters within Israel.

Hamas announced today that one of its activists, Khalil Sakani, was seriously wounded in the head by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell during a mortar attack late yesterday at the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantissi implied, but did not say specifically, that Sakani was involved in firing the mortars when he was wounded.

Hamas in the past has claimed responsibility for mortar attacks.

Five more mortars hit the Israeli communal farm of Nir Am on the edge of the Gaza Strip, also late yesterday.

Israel had tried to stop the mortar fire by briefly seizing two small slivers of Palestinian-controlled territory in Gaza in separate operations Tuesday and yesterday.

The Israeli incursions drew a strong U.S. condemnation, and Sharon spoke yesterday to U.S. President George W. Bush to try to clear the air.

Sharon told Bush the Israeli army "will have no choice but to carry out preventive measures" if the mortar fire persists, a statement by Sharon's office said. It was not clear whether such measures included more incursions.

Sharon also said the Israel takeover of Palestinian areas was intended to be brief from the start.

However, the events leading up to Israel's day-long takeover of a square mile of northeastern Gaza earlier this week raised lingering questions.

The brigadier general in charge of the operation initially said his men were prepared to remain for months, but Sharon ordered a withdrawal of troops later in the day, after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sharply rebuked Israel.

The incursion and hasty withdrawal prompted criticism from settlers, who charged that Sharon was not doing enough to provide security, from hard-line politicians who said he had succumbed to U.S. pressure, and from peace activists, who said that he was thinking only in terms of force, not negotiations.

Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said today that Sharon never informed the security Cabinet about the planned takeover and as a result got himself entangled in a diplomatic spat with the United States.

"If we cross the invisible, but existing line of international legitimacy, of what our friends are prepared to accept, we are immediately reprimanded and sent back to some permitted track, and this is what happened," Sneh, an ex-general, told Israel radio.

Victory is supposed to be sweet. So one might have expected an air of triumph among the Palestinians as they returned to the patch of land in Gaza that Israel's army had reoccupied, only to be pulled out by Ariel Sharon less than a day later.

But there was nothing remotely sweet yesterday, except for the smell of fresh oranges crushed beneath the tracks of tanks and bulldozers which had crashed into the area the day before, mowing down hundreds of citrus trees.

The fruity aroma hung strangely in the air as Palestinians arrived from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun to inspect the damage that they, and we, had been unable to see the day before without running the risk of being shot by the Israeli forces who briefly held the territory.

What they found was a sight all too familiar to the 1.2 million Arabs of Gaza ­ a muddy wasteland about a mile long and 100 yards wide gouged out of the landscape. It was covered in shredded tree trunks, scattered with oranges, and punctuated by the detritus of at least eight flattened buildings, including a border police complex.

Dazed-looking people sifted through the concrete heaps that used to be their homes, some of which had been pounded into pieces no bigger than a fist, searching for anything that could be salvaged. A couple of men showed me two wrecked water wells, and said there were several more ­ which means the surrounding orange orchards will probably also die. "Just look, and write," said one young man, as his wife fished out clothes from the rubble.

If part of the Israeli army's intention was to clear the area to stop Palestinians from using this corner of north-east Gaza to launch mortar attacks on Israeli settlements or towns over the border ­ an attack on Sderot was cited as the provocation for the raid ­ then it did a poor job. Most of the orchard-covered land around remained intact, providing cover for more guerrilla assaults. Palestinian militants demonstrated as much shortly after the Israelis withdrew, by firing at least six more mortars from the same area at the Israeli-controlled Erez industrial zone in northern Gaza and at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim.

But the operation had far more to do with collective punishment, the same clumsy instrument that Israel has repeatedly used to try to force Yasser Arafat to quell Palestinian attacks during the last seven months. Gaza has been under almost permanent economic siege; a third of the population lives on less than $2 a day; thousands of acres and scores of Arab homes have been knocked down. So far all of this misery has been inflicted to no avail.

The word "reoccupation" does not adequately describe Israel's short-lived land-snatch, as all of the fenced-in 28-mile long Gaza Strip has remained under de facto Israeli occupation, even after 1994 when more than two-thirds of it was placed under Palestinian administration. Throughout, Israel retained a stranglehold on its borders, economy, energy supplies, and water.

This week's incursion was another harsh reminder of the continuing Israeli occupation, and the need to end it ­ the primary purpose of the Palestinian uprising. "It is totally counter-productive," said Jihad al-Wazzir, son of Abu Jihad, a leading PLO official assassinated by Israel 13 years ago. "The more Israel hits us, the more entrenched positions become."

In the end, it was also counter-productive for Mr Sharon within Israel itself. The Prime Minister's hasty order to withdraw left many Israelis with the impression that he buckled under pressure from the United States, and was pulling out his tanks after a tongue-lashing from the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

No matter that one senior cabinet minister, Silvan Shalom, insisted yesterday that the decision to withdraw had been taken at 11am on Tuesday, before Washington publicly reacted, or that Mr Sharon's office said the operation was always intended to end on the same day. To many, it looked weak and indecisive. This was not what they had hoped for from the ex-general sold to them at the ballot box as "Mr Security".

[The Palestine Monitor, April 19, 2001]: The Israeli military launched its most aggressive attack against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Monday April 16, 2001 when Israeli tanks, helicopters and navy gun ships heavily shelled several Palestinian areas throughout the Strip before re-occupying Palestinian territory along the border with Israel. One Palestinian policeman was killed, 30 civilians were injured and 12 Palestinian Security Services buildings were destroyed along with several civilian homes and other buildings and tens of dunams of agricultural land.

At midnight on Monday, Israeli forces backed by tank fire re-occupied two chunks of territory near Beit Hanoun, destroying Palestinian property in its wake and killing 23 year-old Mohammed Al Masri and injuring 6 other civilians. By Tuesday morning, Israeli forces had sealed off the Gaza Strip, splitting it into three zones demarcated with tanks, and fully seized Palestinian territory east of Erez border crossing and a few kilometers south of Erez along the Gaza-Israel border fence. Ten hours after it had withdrawn from Palestinian territory in Beit Hanoun, the Israeli military re-entered the area and demolished a Palestinian police station.

Also on Tuesday, Israeli forces in Gaza opened fire on civilians in the Rafah refugee camp, killing 10-year-old Barah el Shael, and in a separate incident, Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Hamza Abeid at the Karni crossing. In the West Bank, Israeli tanks shelled residences in the town of El Khader killing 16-year-old Rami Musa and Israeli forces in Tulkarem shot and killed 17-year-old Bassam Zaharan.

These attacks follow two other attacks on Palestinian areas in Gaza; Khan Younis on Wednesday April 11 and Rafah Saturday April 14, in which Israeli bulldozers accompanied by tanks demolished a total of 47 homes and 20 stores, leaving over 700 people homeless and 83 injured by Israeli gunfire.

Israeli military action against Palestinian residential areas continued well into Wednesday night, when Israeli tanks shelled the Bethlehem area, including the Christian towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala, injuring ten's of residents.