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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Israel Diary: 31 July, 2002 |
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by InDepthNews
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01 Aug 2002
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InDepthNews (at) hotmail.com
As reported in Ha'aretz: 7 killed, 86 wounded
- Israel expels relative to Gaza
- Letter to the editor: Massacres by mistake
- Israel accused of ordering Jewish groups to launch propaganda campaign |
- Eyewitness: "Suddenly everything went black"
- Death of a phtographer: "How long will we go on like this, action-reaction?"
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Casualties, Events and background stories dealing with the Palestine-Israel conflict and occupation as reported in Ha’aretz.
Tariq Ali has said, if you want to know about Israel, just read an Israeli newspaper.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2002
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Ha'aretz A bombing in a crowded cafeteria at the Mount Scopus campus of Jerusalem's Hebrew University killed at least seven people Wednesday afternoon and injured at least 86, 14 seriously. Some of those in the cafeteria were foreign students taking summer school classes, including two South Korean students in critical condition at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. One of the dead was an American, said Dr. Jehuda Hiss, head of the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine. He would not release the name of the victim, but told The Associated Press that the determination was based on identification documents. The U.S. embassy confirmed that one of the dead was an American citizen.
Some 10 of the wounded were Arab citizens of Israel. The injured were taken to hospitals in the city, but the evacuation efforts were hampered by the location of the attack, inside a building on the campus. In a statement released to Al-Jazeera Television, Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Hamas has repeatedly sworn to avenge the assassination last week of its military commander Salah Shehadeh in an IDF air raid that also killed 11 children and a number of adult civilians.
Police spokeswoman Sigal Toledo said it was not a suicide bombing. "The bomb was in a bag which had been planted on a table in the center of the restaurant," she said. Dr. Ovadia Shemesh, deputy director of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, said most of the wounded were between the ages of 18 and 30. He said that most of the injuries were from shrapnel and from the collapse of the cafeteria ceiling.
A senior Fatah movement official said Wednesday that Israel's assassination of Shehadeh led the Hebrew University attack, and that Sharon and his cabinet were thus to blame. Fatah official Hatem Abdel Khader said that the killing of the Hamas military commander had caused an utter collapse of accords that he said Palestinian militant groups were on the verge of signing - agreements that he said would have ended attacks within Israel.
He told the Itim news agency that, "If Israel continues its steps in the territories, the situation will unquestionably escalate. If Israel is interested in having Palestinians return to understandings with (Palestinian) opposition organizations, in particular with Hamas, Israel must undertake practical measures in the territories, such as a withdrawal in the territories and a prisoner release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails."
Though classes were not in session, students were taking exams at the time of the blast, and the cafeteria, situated in the university's Frank Sinatra building, was crowded with diners. There were also numerous students in the building registering for classes for the coming school year, witnesses said.
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Ha'aretz Israel expels relative to Gaza. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security cabinet Wednesday decided to order a relative of a Palestinian terrorist expelled to the Gaza Strip, the first such expulsion since the beginning of the Intifada in September, 2000 and a measure certain to kindle Palestinian anger and prompt world condemnation. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reproached the Shin Bet Security Service for the delay in expelling the man. "I don't understand why you waited so long," Sharon said. Security officials responded that the investigation required time until evidence was found against the Palestinian. They decided to give the relative 12 hours to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, and then to expel him Wednesday night to the Gaza Strip.
The first to be expelled is a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, a relative of a Palestinian alleged to have participated in the July 16 shooting and bombing attack on a bus near the West Bank settlement of Immanuel. The deportation proposal sparked wide international criticism when it was first put forward several weeks ago, and the cabinet had relegated it to the back burner until the Wednesday session. The issue is particularly sensitive for Palestinians, many of whom have gone on record declaring that they would rather be put to death than be expelled from their homes. Then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin incurred fierce international criticism when he exiled 400 Islamic militants to Lebanon in 1992.
The decision could pave the way for additional expulsions, the radio said. It said that only close relatives were under consideration at present, but quoted Public Security Minister Uzi Landau as saying that "it's enough for a relative of a relative of a suicide bomber to set up a mourning tent or visit a mourning tent for him," in order to qualify as a candidate for expulsion. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein replied that deportations could only be ordered against family members if substantive evidence existed that the relative had links to terrorism, the radio said. But the evidence would not need to meet the burden of proof required for formal charges, only the lesser evidence needed for administrative detention orders, Rubinstein was quoted as saying.
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Ha'aretz Letter to the editor: Massacres by mistake. How many massacres must Israel commit before we can no longer shrug them all off as "mistakes" or "accidents"? The massacre of 15 civilians in the attempt to assassinate a Hamas official was trumpeted as a "great success" until Bush slapped Sharon's "heavy-handed" wrist. The massacre of over a hundred civilians in the shelling of "Grapes of Wrath", the shelling of Beirut. How many times are we expected to believe that Israel's occupation forces can do no wrong? Why are we constantly expected to believe that Israel only massacres civilians by accident, even as it's leaders gloat over what a "great success" the killings were? How stupid does Israel take the entire world to be? Isaac Boxx, Austin, TX
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Ha'aretz Israel accused of ordering Jewish groups to accuse French of being anti-Semitic. French President Jacques Chirac yesterday lashed out at what he termed an "anti-French campaign" aimed at portraying his country as anti-Semitic, which he said is being waged by American Jewish groups under orders from Jerusalem. During a meeting in Paris with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Chirac protested this "insult" to his country. Both Chirac and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin advocated convening an international conference to jump start Israeli-Palestinian talks. De Villepin warned that military actions without a political horizon would create a "negative impression." He also argued that the three-year timetable for creation of a Palestinian state proposed by U.S. President George W. Bush was too long.
Two-faced? Peres told Chirac, "I am convinced that Sharon is completely for a peaceful solution". [Der Spiegel quoted Shimon Peres as saying on Saturday that he has "doubts" about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's commitment to peace in the Mideast. Ha'aretz]
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Ha'aretz Eyewitness: "Suddenly everything went black". Bodies lay scattered on the ground, wounded people screamed, shattered tables, chairs and restaurant equipment littered the large room transformed from a friendly multinational cafeteria into a scene of chaos and destruction on Wednesday by a large bomb at Hebrew University in Jersualem which killed seven people and wounded more than 80. Yossi Halpon, 31, a resident from the West Bank settlement of Nokdim said, "Suddenly everything went black, I felt as if I was inside a gas balloon. It was very hot and everything flew."
"The cafeteria was the most popular cafeteria on campus" said a visibly shaken Alastair Goldrein, from Liverpool, England. "It was the place to be." Goldrein, 19, was walking across the lawn on his way there for lunch on Wednesday when there was a huge blast and the ground shook. "Then there was this deathly silence," said Goldrein, who has been taking Jewish studies at the university for the past year. "I ran in, there were people lying around wailing, covered in blood. Scenes that are indescribable, clothes and flesh torn apart."
"I'll never understand why somebody would want to target somewhere like this," he said. "Everyone was happy together, people are eating together. There's no guns in here, no soldiers in here, no policemen in here, just young people 19-25 years old eating their dinner." A fleet of ambulances lined up to evacuate the wounded, most of them young, all of them covered in blood. The bodies of the six who were killed outright lay in a row on a path next to the cafeteria, shrouded in black plastic bags. Another died later in a hospital. Hebrew University student Eli Vaknin told how he rushed to the cafeteria immediately after hearing of the attack, because he was a medic in the Israel Defense Forces. "I saw a girl who was bleeding," he said. "I rushed to bandage her. Eyewitnesses began to scream and became hysterical," Vaknin said "The injured were quiet and tried to comprehend what had happened to them."
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Ha'aretz Death of a phtographer: "How long will we go on like this, action-reaction, action-reaction?" [Excerpted from a longer article in Ha'aretz that gives more details of the photographer's life and death and a last photo as he lay bleeding to death.] Photojournalist Imad Abu Zahra was killed two weeks ago in Jenin. According to the IDF Spokesman, the soldiers were responding to shots fired at them. Shortly after Abu Zahra's colleague, Rafik Dahla - the brother of Said, who was working with Abu Zahra when they were shot - took the photograph, Abu Zahra died from loss of blood. As far as is known, he lay bleeding for half an hour, but because the firing continued, it was impossible to evacuate him. He was finally taken out in a private car, but by then it was too late. The bullet tore the main artery in his thigh and his blood ran out. He was a freelance photographer. A few years ago he wanted to join the Peace Now movement in Israel, establish a Jewish-Arab television station in Jenin and forge peace. He was shot holding his camera.
Dahla, who was wounded in the leg, says the two of them split up the work that day in the face of the tanks: Dahla took photos and Abu Zahra followed the movement of the tank's cannon. It turns out that a professional code has developed in these confrontations between tank and photographer: If the cannon is pointed downward, at the ground, that is an order to stop; if it is raised upward, that means get out fast. An upward and downward movement is an order to raise your shirt and advance slowly. The Palestinian Information Ministry published this lexicon, which is intended for journalists and ambulance drivers during this period when tanks are roaming around the cities of the West Bank.
But the tank cannon did not budge, says Said Dahla. It didn't go up or down. He says the two of them deliberately positioned themselves in the middle of the road, about 40 meters from the tank and the armed personnel carrier [APC], so that the armored soldiers, who see but cannot be seen, could have a clear view of them. Dahla wore a protective vest with the word "Press" emblazoned on it in large letters. He says Abu Zahra was also wearing a photographer's vest with the word "Press" on it.
Abu Zahra did not lift his gaze from the APC while Dahla took photographs. The APC smashed into an electricity pole, even though the street is far wider than the steel machine. According to the IDF Spokesman the crash was accidental, the result of a pursuit. Then, the firing started. Dahla says the soldiers shot for no reason; the IDF Spokesman says the shooting came in response to the throwing of stones and other objects and later on to a shooting in the direction of the soldiers. Dahla has the photograph in his computer, showing the pole bending as the APC rams into it.
In a letter to the editor this week (in the Hebrew edition) a reader wrote that Abu Zahra's dream was to study Arabic-Hebrew translation at Beit Berl College in Israel. "Every few months he would phone to ask whether I had been able to get him a scholarship," Amit-Kochavi wrote. "He was skilled enough to meet the admission terms, but the tuition fees in Israel were too high, far beyond his means. I felt that for him I was a bridge to the hope of a different life, one in which he would be able to realize himself and exhaust his full potential. But now he is dead."
Curfew was imposed again on Sunday in Jenin. Nevertheless, a few people could be seen outside occasionally and even some cars, whose drivers dared to move around until the advent of the tanks, and then they fled in panic. Like human shadows, the few individuals wandered around the dusty, wrecked streets in the July heat, looking as though they had nothing more to lose, so why not go outside during curfew and risk their lives? A handful of children, a mentally disturbed youngster, a pregnant woman laboring to climb the steep street. A few fruits and vegetables, covered with blankets, are for sale in the stalls of the deserted market. Melons that have grown mushy, eggplants that have dried out, piles of rotten tomatoes. The devastation of the city is even more pronounced when its residents become prisoners in their homes.
"Liquidation, occupation, terror - nothing will stop us," someone has scrawled with a marker pen on a poster that hangs on a tree at the entrance to a handsome house in the city's eastern neighborhood - the home of Imad Abu Zahra. There are no posters of political organizations on the house, only of the Palestinian Journalists Association. "This is our fate and this is the fate of the entire Palestinian people, and we must cope with that fate," says the bereaved father, Subhi. "At this time, everyone of the Palestinian people - child, adult, woman, the aged - the same fate that befell Imad is liable to await them all." He is a retired English teacher who became a car insurance salesman for an Egyptian company, and he insured the cars of Jenin, which are now immobile or reduced to mangled heaps of metal. The neighbor's car, which was totally crushed by a tank, lies in front of the house. "No, the policy doesn't cover that," the insurance agent explains with a smile.
Imad was his first-born. Not long ago he hosted a group of foreign journalists in the house and the father noticed that one of them, a woman, was sitting alone, apart from the others. She was a Jew from the United States. "She was hesitant and afraid and I reassured her: `You are in the home of a Palestinian and you are safe.' Subhi proudly shows photocopies of his late son's press cards, issued by the Palestinian Authority and by Israel's Government Press Office. There is also a letter from 1998, admitting Imad to Leicester University in England to study for a second degree in mass communications - another dream that was not fulfilled. And a certificate of participation in a course on "Art as Language," given at the Arab-Jewish community of Neveh Shalom, in Israel, in 1997. And a business card: Abu Zahra, journalism, advertising, media.
The father: "The question that gives me no rest is: Who is responsible for the crime? Who is responsible for this crisis, for the tears of mothers, for the pain of the two nations? Who is responsible?" And his answer: "The leaders of both nations. Both nations should have long ago forced their leaders to put an end to the violence. How long will we go on like this, action-reaction, action-reaction - until when? [Ha'aretz Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer authorized a plan for a military response to Wednesday afternoon's bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in which seven people were killed. He approved the plan during talks with IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon. The army will likely carry out the operations Wednesday night.] Until when will this bloody game continue? This sad game. I have to ask the Israeli people that question. We are thirsty for someone who will show us a little sympathy."
The mother: "What will you say to the world? We are not terrorists. Imad was not someone who put the soldiers in the tank in danger. Why did they kill him? Only because he is a Palestinian? Is it right to kill someone only because he is a Jew? Why did they kill Imad?" Then the tears welled up again.
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