Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Israeli tanks and troops roll into Palestinian refugee camps and detain hundreds of men in a campaign to stop terrorist attacks.
©Los Angeles Times
March 13, 2002
JERUSALEM -- The Israeli army took control of the West Bank city of Ramallah in a massive display of force Tuesday, battling gunmen, digging trenches across roads, searching homes and detaining hundreds of men in the nerve center of the Palestinian Authority.
The siege of Ramallah and continued attacks in the Gaza Strip represent Israel's largest military offensive in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since capturing the territories in the 1967 Middle East War. The campaign follows a mounting string of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israelis.
Tuesday's invasion of Ramallah and overnight incursion into Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp were part of a 13-day-old, wide-scale hunt for Palestinian gunmen in towns, villages and refugee camps. Thirty-five Palestinians were killed in a 24-hour period ending Tuesday night.
The army said it means to crush militias that are targeting Israelis, but even as tanks patrolled Ramallah's streets, two gunmen opened fire on Israeli motorists near the country's border with Lebanon, killing six people and wounding seven before they were killed by security forces.
Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the army chief of staff, told a committee of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, that 20,000 troops are now deployed in the West Bank and Gaza and that the army has just called up 1,000 reservists who live in Jewish settlements to guard their communities.
Alarmed by the bloodletting, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged both sides to "lead your peoples away from disaster." In an especially harsh criticism of Israel, he urged the Jewish state to end its "illegal occupation" of Palestinian land and halt "the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians."
He also told the Palestinians that they were doing irreparable harm to their own cause by failing to stop acts of terror, especially suicide bombings, which he termed "morally repugnant."
More than 100 tanks rolled into Ramallah, neighboring Al Bireh and the nearby village of Beitunia late Monday, three days before U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni is due here to try again to secure a cease-fire.
Troops and tanks stayed out of downtown Ramallah and didn't enter the headquarters of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, although they came close. They entered most other neighborhoods and the Amari refugee camp in southern Ramallah, where hundreds of men were rounded up for interrogation.
Israeli soldiers issued calls on bullhorns for men and boys in Amari to surrender. Residents said few complied. The Palestinian Authority urged residents to resist the troops, and Palestinians reported that at least three police and two militia fighters were shot dead in sporadic fighting that raged through streets deserted by terrified residents.
"It's very tense," said Khaled Helou, a physician who lives in Amari. "Everyone is waiting for something worse to happen. We're getting ready for something big."
Army bulldozers broke the city's main water lines when they dug a trench down the main road, and water gushed from the underground pipes for hours. Soldiers took over an apartment building in Amari and demolished a home belonging to a female suicide bomber who killed herself and an elderly Israeli last month.
Much of the shooting raged around Ramallah's hospital, where tanks took up position early in the day. Younis Khatib, director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, said tanks fired on an approaching ambulance. After pleas from Palestinian Health Ministry officials, the tanks pulled back at midafternoon but returned by dusk, as a heavy fog descended on the city.
Palestinian gunmen of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade shot dead a suspected collaborator and strung him by his feet from a metal sculpture in Ramallah's main square. Gunmen accused him of having betrayed three members of the militia to the Israelis.
Army Col. Gal Hirsh said the Ramallah invasion was meant to "put a wall between the terrorists and Israeli citizens."
But as Hirsh briefed reporters in Jerusalem, two Palestinian gunmen took up position on a slope above a road in northern Israel and opened fire on passing motorists. A police officer and two women were among the six shot dead. Seven others were injured.
Initial reports of the shooting attack said the gunmen were believed to have infiltrated from Lebanon. By evening, Israeli security forces said that they had no evidence there had been an incursion from Lebanon and that they suspected the gunmen were Palestinian.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli armor and infantry pulled out of Jabaliya after 18 Palestinians were killed in two hours. Later, helicopter gunships shelled a welding factory in Khan Yunis, killing four workers. The army said the factory was producing weapons.