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Israeli Forces Re-Occupy Hebron as World's Attention Diverted to Afghanistan
HEBRON, West Bank, Oct 7 (News Agencies) - Machinegun fire ripped this bullet-scarred valley Sunday as the Israeli army mounted its siege for an unprecedented third day in a district on the 4,000-year-old city of Hebron (al-Khalil), ground zero in the struggle war between ultra-nationalist Israeli settlers and Palestinians, news agencies reported.
Wafeh Junedeh wails and points at the spilled pot of yellow rice and shards of glass on the living room floor, left there from when the Israeli army commandeered her house three days ago as it seized back swathes of Arab land ceded to Palestinians as part of a 1996 autonomy accord.
"They pushed us out of the house. Everything was smashed," she says in her kitchen, which is pockmarked with bullet holes of all sizes.
The army let her family return home Sunday after three nights outside under a tarpaulin, surrounded by armored vehicles and the pulverized frame of a car.
"From here, they shot at people," she cries by her smashed out bedroom window.
Blue and white Israeli flag flutters and camouflage netting hangs from three limestone buildings, with snipers still poised inside.
Three tanks belch clouds of black exhaust and point their cannon at the pop of gunfire below them.
The army thundered into the Palestinian autonomous areas of Abu Sneineh and Hart al-Sheikh by tank, Apache helicopter and armored vehicles.
Five Palestinians were killed and another 15 wounded in the maelstrom.
"This is by far the most serious situation we've encounters since we came here in 1994," Lars Tore Kjerand, of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), a neutral monitoring group set up after a Jewish settler sprayed scores of Muslims with gunfire at the Cave of the Patriarchs.
"It has never been so serious. It is an escalation."
A diplomatic source says the nightly fire between Israel and the Palestinians in Hebron, now peaking, has intensified since mid-July.
The diplomat also noted more dangerous behavior by the settlers since July, including "attacking Palestinians and destroying their homes."
Wafeh simply wonders when any peace will return to her city. Her eight-month old baby Yusuf has a fever and sobs after three days camped outside. Wafeh says, "We are simple people. I'm afraid when I hear bullets."
Another two Palestinians were struck down Saturday night, with the Israeli army, insisting the men had opened fire, with Palestinians claiming the men were civilians.
A Palestinian man was gunned down and one seriously wounded Sunday night.
The army has vowed to hold the ground it has taken indefinitely.
"Incursions in the past were just for several hours. The hope ... was to send a message that the army would take action. This message was not observed. In this case, the incursion is for a longer period of time," Dall said as four tanks lumbered down a broad avenue.
The 400 religious Jewish settlers living under armed guard in the city's center have greeted the attack on Hebron, home to 120,000 Palestinians, with delight.
Fierce in their belief in a Greater Israel, according to the boundaries ascribed in the Old Testament, they have hailed the army's daring incursion after criticizing for months Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's failure to retake the Palestinian neighborhoods.
"This is what we have been waiting for the army to do and they have finally done it," says Hebron settler spokesman David Wilder. "They should have done it a year ago."
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