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Israeli Tanks Invade Jenin in Massive Overnight Raid
JENIN, West Bank, Aug 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In the largest invasion of Palestinian areas since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, hundreds of Israeli occupation troops - supported by at least 50 tanks, Apache helicopters and jeeps - reoccupied parts of the Palestinian-ruled northern West Bank town of Jenin early Tuesday, news agencies reported.
The Israeli occupation forces seized several Palestinian Authority (PA) buildings in Jenin as bulldozers leveled two Palestinian security posts.
Israeli tanks fired at Palestinian security officers for several hours as Israeli helicopters flew above the town during the operation, BBC's online service reported.
Against the buzz of helicopters and the bright lights of flares exploding in the night sky, the Palestinian Intifada's (uprising) leadership used mosque loudspeakers to call upon residents to confront Israeli soldiers as they invaded the town, news agencies reported.
Witnesses said Israeli troops fired heavy munitions as hundreds of people left their homes, fleeing the shelling.
A reporter from the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, said that Israeli bulldozers demolished several houses and buildings around Palestinian security headquarters in the town.
Undercover Israeli soldiers - dressed in civilian clothes - exchanged fire with Palestinians on the streets of Jenin, which was handed over to Palestinian rule in 1995 under an interim peace deal, reported the British newspaper, The Independent.
In further Israeli violence, a 19-year-old Palestinian, Shadi Affori, was killed in an explosion at his home on Tuesday; as a second Palestinian man was wounded by a blast in Jenin.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement confirmed that Affori was one of its members.
Commenting on events in Jenin, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told the BBC's "World Today" that extreme-right wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "had opened hell's gate tonight."
"The endgame of Mr. Sharon is to make sure that he closes every possible door for peace."
Another PA spokesman said the Israeli invasion was "a declaration of war," adding that, "the world should move as quickly as possible to avoid a regional war."
Palestinians say Israel intends to reoccupy the areas it ceded to the PA after the 1995 peace accords. Jenin was the first West Bank town to be handed over to the Palestinians under the Oslo agreement.
In Gaza, on Tuesday, the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, said Israel would pay "very dearly" if it tries to enter Palestinian territory again, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"If the Israeli occupier again tries to penetrate into our cities, villages and refugee camps, our people will administer a thrashing of a lesson and will make it pay very dearly," Hamas official, Ismail Hanniyieh, told AFP.
"We believe Israeli incursions into our cities will be repeated, but we are ready to confront them," he said.
On Monday, Palestinians observed a general strike in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in protest to Israel's seizure of Orient House, the PA's headquarters in mainly Arab, but Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem - a move that drew international condemnation, including from the U.N. and the U.S.
Most Palestinian shops and businesses were closed while Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police again scuffled outside Orient House itself.
Ten Palestinian protesters were arrested as they struggled to raise Palestinian flags.
Leading Palestinian politician, Hanan Ashrawi, said that the demonstrations would continue.
"There will be mass protests, demonstrations and all types of activity until Israel gets the message," she said.
At the Arab "day of rage" protest of the Israeli occupation of Orient House, six Israeli border guards and plainclothes police officers seized a Palestinian youth, who held up a Palestinian flag made of paper. He was subsequently kicked, beaten, punched in the face and back, and then kneed in the groin, reported a correspondent for The Independent.
Another young Palestinian man who tried to escape an Israeli policeman's grasp at the iron security barriers was dragged back into police lines and set upon by eight Israeli men.
Around 20 television cameras and a score of photographers ran with Israeli Shin Bet intelligence men as they dragged the screaming Palestinian man up the road towards Orient House, kicking him in the chest and forcing back his head until he choked, added The Independent.
The moment the young Palestinian man was in the back seat of an Israeli police van, an Israeli plainclothes man in a red shirt began savagely beating him. The Israeli man held him down and kicked him again and again between the legs until he was crying in a high-pitched voice.
"It was, as one of the foreign protesters muttered, enough to turn a Palestinian into a suicide bomber. It was also very, very weird," he added.
"After all the talk of Israel being a peace-loving state, founded upon the rule of law, the police would suddenly prove that those constant Palestinian complaints of beatings and brutality were true, right in front of us.
"Up the street, closer to Orient House, his [an Israeli soldier] colleagues were taking good care of their prisoners. In front of the horrified eyes of a group of humanitarian workers, one of them [an] American, they beat the captured Palestinians all over again.
"If this is what the Israeli police do to Palestinians in front of us, what do they do to them behind our backs?" wrote The
Independent's correspondent.
The crowd had no chance of taking back Orient House, and the Israeli government has declared that it will never be returned, the BBC reported.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other territories.
The international community does not recognize the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, despite Israel's claims that the entire city of Jerusalem is its capital.
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