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MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 8/05: It has not happened yet, but it is now the direction things are heading. Soon the Palestinians may start responding to Israel's increasingly brutal military occupation, unprecedented anywhere else in the world of our day, by targeting Israeli political leaders and maybe Zionist leaders outside of Israel. Soon suiciders using homemade bombs and old-style guns may turn to weapons of mass destruction that are no longer secret or unavailable -- everything from anthrax to plaque to smallpox to backpack nuclear devices. Such developments are no longer as difficult to contemplate as they have been in the past. Target everyone everywhere is being feintly heard coming from the depths of despair and from the deeper underground recesses to which the fighting cells are being pushed.
A few days ago the Israelis ratcheted up the rules of the game by clearly targeting for assassination well-known Palestinian spokesman and political leaders. In the high-tech attack in Nablus they also killed two journalists and two pre-teenage boys. Then yesterday they went after Mustapha Barghouti, one of the best-known Palestinians in Arafat's own Fatah organization.
Just a day later, earlier today, a Palestinian single-handedly attacked the headquarters of the Israeli army in the heart of Tel Aviv; quite possible an example of how much more dangerous and unpredictable this still expanding conflict could become. It has just been learned the Palestinian who carried out today's attack is a 30-year-old Israeli citizen from Jerusalem, married with 3 children, employed, and never before implicated in any such fighting. No one before can remember a person with this kind of background perpetrating an attack of this kind on his own right in the center of Tel Aviv in the middle of the day!
[TEL AVIV, Israel (August 5, 2001 11:23 a.m. EDT) - Firing an automatic rifle from a car, a Palestinian gunman shot 10 people Sunday, most of them soldiers, on a busy street outside Israel's Defense Ministry in downtown Tel Aviv. The gunman was hit by return fire and seriously wounded.
Hours later, Israeli helicopters fired missiles in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, killing a Hamas activist Amer Mansour Habiri, 23, as he traveled in a car, witnesses said. The car was completely destroyed in the attack, said Morad Yassin, one of the witnesses.
Israel's army, which has killed about 50 Palestinians in targeted attacks during the current fighting, claimed that he was responsible for bombings and shootings, and was organizing suicide attacks that were to take place within days.
In another development, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reasserted his strong opposition to the Palestinian demand for international observers in the Middle East conflict. "We will not be able to accept international forces or international observers," Sharon told "Fox News Sunday."
The Palestinians say they want monitors to keep tabs on Israel's powerful military, but the Israelis have long resisted such calls, saying that such a force would not be effective and may be biased against Israel.
Palestinian gunmen carry out daily shooting attacks against Israeli targets, but most take place in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Sunday's shooting alarmed many Tel Aviv residents because the city has been an infrequent target of attack during the 10 months of Mideast fighting.
"This is a symbolic issue. (The Palestinians) are bringing attacks to the middle of Tel Aviv, the largest Israeli city, very close to the fences of the main military installation," said army spokesman Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey. "This is the first time they have shot, as far as I remember, in such a way in a large city."
The gunman, traveling in a black car, opened fire with an M-16 automatic rifle as many of the soldiers were leaving the Defense Ministry building to go to lunch. Of the 10 injured, eight were soldiers. The wounded suffered light to moderate injuries.
Soldiers and police fired back and hit the gunman, seriously wounding him in the chest, police said. The gunman's car crashed at a nearby construction site, and he collapsed.
Palestinian security sources identified the gunman as Ali al-Julani, a 30-year-old from east Jerusalem. There was no immediate word on whether he was linked to any Palestinian political group.
Tel Aviv was the scene of a Palestinian suicide bombing on June 1 that killed 21 young people outside a disco. That was the deadliest single attack in the Israeli-Palestinian fighting. But Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean coast, is regarded as safer than most cities because of the large security presence and its distance from the Palestinian territories.
Earlier Sunday, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at Palestinian police offices in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli raid followed repeated mortar attacks by the Palestinians.
The commander of Palestinian national security in Rafah, Col. Fawzi Zaqouk, said three missiles hit his office, causing considerable damage but no casualties. He said he and other officers heard the helicopters approaching and left the building.
Asked if he believed he was the target of the raid, Zaqouk told The Associated Press, "All Palestinians are now the target of the Israeli military."
The Israeli military said it acted after Palestinian militants fired 26 mortar rounds at Jewish settlements and army outposts in Gaza. One of the mortars wounded two people, a father and son, at the isolated Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, the military said.
Israeli helicopters on Saturday fired two missiles near the car carrying prominent Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti and his bodyguards in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Saturday.
Barghouti, the leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group in the West Bank and one of the most visible Palestinian leaders in the area, was shaken but unhurt in the attack.
He said Israel was trying to assassinate him. The Israeli military had no official comment, but military sources, demanding anonymity, said the target was not Barghouti, but one of the bodyguards.
The sources said the bodyguard, Muhannad Abu Halaweh, was responsible for several attacks against Israelis, including the shooting death of anti-Arab extremist Binyamin Zeev Kahane and his wife on a West Bank road.
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| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/8/324.htm |