MID-EAST
REALITIES -
MER - www.MiddleEast.Org -
Washington - 20 October 2003: They control the
huge ghetto through checkpoints, electrified fences, and guard-post
watch-towers with search lights. All entry and exit is in their
hands. Their military occupation commanders wield power
based on military law, brutal repression, and ruthless killing.
They are using the most advanced high-tech weapons of war -- including
battle tanks and helicopter gunships -- against refugee camps.
Gaza ghetto has become in fact the world's largest
concentration camp. And a historic extended pogrom is now
underway; this one perpetrated by the survivors of the Holocaust now
enshrined with power in the guise of the Jewish State of Israel.
And Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamed is right to raise one of the
central usually unspoken issues - for the Jews of the world are
now, with few but noteable exceptions, complicitous in excusing,
perpetrating, and rationalizing this brutal ongoing pogrom; as is the
world's only superpower, the United States where they wield unrivaled
influence.
Eleven killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza; Islamic groups threaten
revenge
IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
NUSSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP - 20 Oct)
-- Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded Palestinian targets
in
the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing 11 people, including eight in a
refugee camp where a car was bombed. One missile exploded on a street
crowded with schoolchildren, wounding four of them.
The airstrikes came a day after Palestinian militants
fired
eight homemade rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and Palestinian
gunmen ambushed an Israeli patrol in the West Bank, killing three
soldiers.
The violent Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad
threatened revenge, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged
more raids, further clouding Mideast peace efforts.
"The Israeli military will continue to act to foil
terror
attacks, capture murderers and liquidate terror organizations," Sharon
said in a speech to parliament.
Israeli aircraft struck five times Monday, hitting a
suspected
Hamas weapons cache twice, another storehouse and a car carrying
suspected militants.
The deadliest attack came after nightfall in the
Nusseirat
refugee camp in central Gaza. Residents said Israeli helicopters fired
three missiles at the main street, destroying a car.
Residents said one of the dead was a doctor who was
treating
victims when a second missile struck. The identity of the other victims
was not immediately known, and the military did not comment.
Hundreds of camp residents carried charred pieces of
the vehicle aloft and chanted, "Revenge, revenge."
Israel's Channel 10 TV said none of the dead were
militants, characterizing the refugee camp strike as a "mistake."
In Gaza City, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a
building
in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood, the same structure that was hit in an
earlier airstrike Monday, residents said. Eleven people were wounded,
they said. Israeli military sources said the attack was meant to finish
the work of the first one.
The first three airstrikes destroyed two weapons labs
and
warehouses of Hamas, the military said. Four children and a 70-year-old
woman were among 23 wounded. Two missiles exploded on a street crowded
with schoolchildren.
Monday's attacks came as U.S. officials at the embassy
in Tel
Aviv confirmed that John Wolf, the head of the team monitoring
implementation of the troubled U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, was
not planning to return to the region soon. Wolf left for the United
States last month, saying at the time he'd be back in 10 days.
A Palestinian bombing attack on a U.S. convoy in Gaza
last
week, killing three American guards, had led to expectations that the
United States would scale back its involvement.
Negotiations over implementing the "road map" plan,
formally
presented in June, have sputtered amid violence and political turmoil.
The plan calls for an end to the three-year conflict and leads to a
Palestinian state in 2005.
However, except for a six-week Palestinian stand-down
in the
summer, clashes and bombings have continued unabated. Also, the
Palestinians have been unable to field a stable government, and with
Israel and the United States boycotting Yasser Arafat, no recent
contacts have been held between Israeli and Palestinian officials.
In his speech, Sharon called Arafat "the greatest
obstacle to
peace." Therefore, he added, "Israel is determined to bring about his
removal from the political arena," referring to a Cabinet decision last
month. In a newspaper interview last week, Sharon had indicated that he
had no plan to expel Arafat -- an apparent softening of Israel's
position.
Sharon's criticism of Arafat was greeted with catcalls
and
prompted several Arab legislators to walk out of the chamber. The
speech also received a harsh response from Shimon Peres, leader of the
opposition Labor Party, who accused Sharon of being insincere in his
peacemaking efforts.
"Prime minister, you have missed the opportunity,"
Peres said.
"We are dealing with a nation that is fighting for its
freedom,
and don't take them lightly," said Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel
peace prize, of the Palestinians.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator,
called
Sharon's address a "speech of continuing the use of the most
disproportionate use of force against Palestinians and a speech that
was determined to undermine hope, peace, and reconciliation."
The facilities Israel targeted Monday had been used to
make and
store weapons, including Qassams, the army said. Hamas has fired dozens
of Qassams, with a range of about six miles, at Israeli settlements in
Gaza and at towns just outside the fence in the past three years.
The airstrikes targeted the "artery of the weapons
chain," said an Israeli army spokeswoman, Maj. Sharon Feingold.
Palestinians were harshly critical. Prime Minister
Ahmed Qureia
said that "the world should wake up to this aggression," but that he
still hopes to negotiate a truce with Israel.
In the first strike, Israeli warplanes bombed a
building under construction in Gaza City that Israel said was a weapons
site.
Eleven Palestinians were wounded. The alleged weapons
workshop
was 200 yards from the house of Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah Shami,
who was not hurt.
Less than three hours later, two missiles hit a white
pickup
truck. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said the two men in the truck had tried to salvage
explosives not destroyed in the initial airstrike.
The two men in the truck and a bystander were killed,
and 12
Palestinians were hurt, four seriously. Israel has killed dozens of
wanted Palestinians, as well as many bystanders, in targeted attacks.
The pickup had stopped at a traffic light near a gas
station on
a busy street crowded with schoolchildren, when the missiles hit the
front of the vehicle. A kindergarten and an elementary school had just
let out students for the day.
"Schoolchildren were trying to cross the road (at the
time),"
said bus driver Ahmed Sobeh, who was driving behind the pickup. "I saw
a person in the car being evacuated and his body was completely burned.
I also saw a teenager on the side of the street covered with blood but
he was alive."
In the third attack, a missile destroyed a one-room
house on
the outskirts of Gaza City. A second missile demolished a car parked
nearby, Palestinian officials said. The car's passengers apparently
fled before the missile hit, witnesses said.
In the West Bank, soldiers imposed a curfew on the
village of
Ein Yabrud, near the town of Ramallah, and searched for the attackers
in Sunday's ambush, the military said. Three soldiers were killed and
another was seriously wounded.