ZGram - 4/9/2002 - "Ethnic Cleansing Israeli Style - Part III of 3

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

April 9, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

A Little Town in Judea, Besieged by Israelis and by Grief:

[START]

By JAMES BENNET - Paril 4, 2002 - New York Times

ETHLEHEM, West Bank, April 3 - They did not know much about the 
Palestinian, just his name, and that he came from a refugee camp, and 
that they simply could not stop his bleeding.

They found him on the stony street on Tuesday morning, shortly after 
the Israeli ground forces invaded. He had a big hole in his right 
side, it seemed from shrapnel, and so they helped him into their 
two-room home and made him as comfortable as they could on blankets 
piled on the hard kitchen floor.

As the crimson stain crept over his pale blue shirt, they called for 
an ambulance. They called again and again. There was a hospital just 
a few blocks away, but no ambulance could pass through the gunfire or 
get by the Israeli armored vehicles that were choking the narrow 
lanes of Bethlehem's old city.

"They told us to give him water and soup," said Fathia Musa Attiyeh, 
sobbing as she remembered how helpless she was. "This morning he 
said, `I'm dying.' "

He held out for a few more hours, until about three o'clock this 
afternoon. By five, his body was stiffening. As a child stared, Issam 
Issis, who had also cared for the stranger, sat beside the body, 
gently stroking the black hair and crying softly. The man had been 
unarmed, Mr. Issis said. His name was Abdel Khader Abu Ahmed, and he 
came from a refugee camp in Jordan.

Outside, a wailing woman shouted into the air, cursing the Israelis, 
the Arabs, everybody.

An ambulance that finally reached the neighborhood could not take the 
body. Two wounded people were already riding atop three bodies inside.

Bethlehem is a beautiful place wasted, like so much else in this 
deepening, maddening fight. Spiked by the spires of churches and the 
minarets of mosques, it climbs the shoulders of a hill, with a view 
east across olive groves and desert spaces to the mountains of Jordan.

At its heart is the cobbled Manger Square, where the Omar ben 
al-Khattab mosque faces the Church of the Nativity.

The church, originally built in the fourth century, is revered by 
Christians, who believe it sits above the manger - a grotto, really - 
where Jesus was born. Lit by flickering votive candles, a silver star 
marks the very spot.

The church, fragrant with centuries of incense, is now full of 
Palestinian gunmen seeking refuge from the Israeli soldiers who have 
seized Manger Square.

Bethlehem's streets were terrifyingly empty today. The indifferent 
tread of the conflict has fallen everywhere. Cars were pancake flat. 
Store fronts were smashed, mint-green steel doors blown in like 
curtains before a powerful wind. Sneakers and piles of grain tumbled 
into the streets. People were too neighborly, or perhaps too scared, 
to loot shelves that were fully stocked.

In addition to the occasional bursts of machine-gun fire, there were 
some other signs of life. An improvised kite - a cone of paper 
trailed by a blue ribbon - danced above one street. The string led 
back to a child's hand, reaching through the bars across a window.

The signs of death were more blunt. The door to one house stood open; 
no one answered a call of hello. Shell casings littered the floor and 
bullet holes pocked the walls.

Upstairs, in the shadows, lay another body. Someone had attempted 
first aid, bandaging the man's arm and applying an intravenous drip. 
But it was not enough. The man's torso was bare and stained with 
dried blood. A loop of red prayer beads lay by the body.

Cracked water pipes sent jets of water into the streets. An electric 
switchboard was smashed in. A three-foot hole gaped in the 
second-story wall of one house, while a beige sedan looked like 
something monstrous had taken a bite out of its side.

An Israeli jeep stopped an ambulance, and the soldiers inside forced 
two medics to stand against a wall while another medic spent 20 
minutes taking every item out of the vehicle and proving it was 
innocuous. Ambulances have been used to transport terrorists and 
weapons, Israel says.

Two sections of green-painted armor from an Israeli vehicle lay near 
one damaged wall, evidently broken free by a Palestinian bomb.

The proud faces of the martyrs - Palestinian gunmen, most of them, 
who have died in the conflict - stared down on the wreckage from 
posters plastered everywhere. It is because of them and people like 
them, Israel says, that it is conducting this costly invasion.

Israeli officials say they know their violence could breed more 
gunmen and suicide bombers, but they insist they have no choice. This 
invasion should at least slow their opponents down, they say, and 
prove that Israel is willing to fight, if there is any doubt on that 
score.

People here are furious. They talk of an 80-year-old man killed in a 
mosque. Of a mother and adult son whose bodies lay rotting overnight 
in a house no ambulance could reach.

"They are afraid, of course," Hassam Khalil said of his five 
children. "But I hugged them and told them, `Don't worry. If we are 
going to die, we are going to die.' "

Like so many Palestinians interviewed recently, he said he would like 
to send a message to President Bush. "What kind of terror is this?" 
he said, indicating the destruction around him. Palestinians are 
baffled by the Americans' reluctance to intervene.

Not everyone was trapped here. Tonight the United States dispatched 
armored vehicles to scoop up some of its citizens, most of them peace 
advocates who came to attempt civil disobedience in the mayhem.

Preceded by an Israeli armored personnel carrier, four Chevrolet 
Suburbans - the color General Motors calls champagne - pulled up 
outside the Star Hotel at dusk. None of the vehicles flew the 
American flag, but there was no mistaking the men who piled out of 
them, members of the diplomatic security service wearing blue jeans 
or khaki pants. Carrying M-16's, with night-vision goggles at hand 
and pistols strapped to each thigh, they spread out through the 
street, under an icy drizzle whipped by a fierce wind.

"Who's going for a ride today?" one of them drawled to the waiting Americans.

The peace advocates showed their passports and permitted their bags 
to be searched, then climbed into the cars. A consular official 
pleaded with holdouts to join the caravan. "I agree with your 
politics and I admire the courage of your convictions," he said. "But 
I think you're in danger."

At last the armed men backed toward their waiting vehicles. One of 
them made a final pitch: "This is the last call for Americans!"

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Only the brave know how to forgive;  a coward never forgives;  it is 
not in his nature."

(Laurence Sterne)