- The Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, says some
of his government's military strikes against the Palestinians make him
"shudder".
Mr Peres would have had good reason to shudder yesterday, had he listened
to the testimonies of the residents of Salfit. They described in detail
how an Israeli undercover death squad arrived in the West Bank town in
a pre-dawn raid and shot two young policemen at close range as they lay
unarmed on the ground.
The Israeli soldiers, dressed in black, spoke Arabic so fluently that Iman
Herzala - who heard them talking in the street outside her house - at first
wondered whether they were Palestinian forces taking part in a training
exercise. But that was before she saw the executions, less than 100 yards
from her front door.
Residents had scraped earth over the spot, but yesterday afternoon patches
of blood were visible. A low wall bore the marks of several bullets.
Looking hollow-eyed and distressed, Mrs Herzala, 37, who has six children,
described the last moments of Dia Nabil Mahmoud, 19, and Abdul Ashour,
22.
They were among seven people to be killed by the Israelis yesterday in
raids on more than four communities in the occupied territories as Ariel
Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, increased his military pressure on
the Palestinians. At the same time, Israeli tanks and bulldozers carried
out their biggest housing demolition of the intifada at Khan Younis in
the Gaza strip, knocking down 35 houses and making 345 people homeless.
Mr Mahmoud - a member of Yasser Arafat's Force 17 security force - and
Mr Ashour, from Palestinian military intelligence, were shot in the early
stages of the Israeli raid in which tanks and bulldozers, backed by helicopters,
came thundering into the Palestinian-run town of 10,000 near Nablus at
around 2am.
Mrs Herzala said: "The two boys came and knocked on my door, and told
me that the Israelis were invading the town. I opened the door and asked
them to come inside, but they refused and went on walking up the street.
The Israeli soldiers came up to them and asked them to put down their
weapons - they only had one - and put their hands behind their backs.
"They put down the gun. The Israelis asked them to lie on the ground,
which they did. Then they started shooting them with machine-guns."
She said she watched the scene - illuminated by the light of the soldiers'
torches - by peering out of her front door. At the same time, Khadiji al-Fataj,
61, was looking down at the spot where the execution took place from the
window of her home, a few doors from Mrs Herzala's. She said: "I
heard soldiers asking the policemen to stop and lie down. One was on one
side of the road, and one on the other. I saw them being shot."
Yesterday afternoon, as the women told their stories, Mr Mahmoud's father
sat close by the spot, dazed and exhausted. "He was just a child.
If you look at his picture, you can see that," he said.
The Israeli armed forces said the Salfit raid was in response to "murderous
terrorist attacks" in the area.
The wording of their official explanation was suspiciously vague: Israeli
soldiers came on "armed Palestinians who came out of targets for detention.
They stormed the terrorists and killed them."
Mr Sharon has moved military operations into a higher gear. Yesterday's
operations were aimed at Fatah, the mainstream organisation headed by Yasser
Arafat. The six people killed in Salfit were all part of Mr Arafat's security
apparatus. Three homes were destroyed, all belonging to Fatah members.
Mr Sharon is bludgeoning the rickety structure of the Palestinian Authority,
liquidating its police and attacking the middle-ground pro-Arafat leadership.
But there is dissent in the government ranks.
Mr Peres told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Mr Sharon's decision
to shun the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. Mr Peres reportedly
said: "I asked him [Sharon], 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will
happen then?'"
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=110208
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