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Posted on 08/01/2002 7:38:21 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer
NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli troops entered the narrow alleyways of the Old City of Nablus early Friday, residents said, after about 150 armored vehicles moved into the West Bank city after midnight.
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The incursion followed a devastating bombing attack at a university in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Israel indicated it would retaliate. Early Friday, an El Al Israel Airlines plane took off for New York, carrying the bodies of two of the five American victims of the bombing, in which seven people died and more than 80 were wounded.
After midnight, tanks and armored personnel carriers took up positions in the middle of Nablus, residents said, and surrounded the Old City. Soldiers left their vehicles and moved into the alleys, trading gunfire with Palestinians. Two Palestinian gunmen were killed, witnesses said.
In the nearby village of Salem, Israeli soldiers surrounded the house of a Hamas activist, Amjad Jubur, 28, and shot him dead after they had handcuffed his hands behind his back, a neighbor said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
In the Gaza Strip ( news - web sites), one Palestinian was killed and two wounded in exchanges of fire after midnight Friday when Israeli troops moved to destroy structures along the Gaza border with Egypt, residents said. Israeli armored vehicles knocked down three buildings, they said, and ordered families to leave other structures. The area is the scene of frequent clashes. Israel controls the border zone and often moves to stop arms smuggling.
Nablus residents said the tanks entered the city from four directions, the largest incursion since Israel took over seven of the eight main West Bank cities and towns starting June 20. The invading force included bulldozers, witnesses said, indicating that the Israelis planned to tear down buildings.
Nablus had been under tight curfew, its residents ordered to stay in their homes for six weeks with only a few short breaks, but the people successfully defied the confinement orders for three days this week before Israeli troops moved back into the middle of the city on Wednesday.
Earlier, Israel Radio reported that the commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank region, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, signed orders to expel two relatives of Palestinian attackers, and Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein approved the orders, giving them 12 hours to appeal. The deadline was to expire at midday Friday. The military refused to comment on the report.
The two would be expelled from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. They were implicated in deadly attacks in Tel Aviv and near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Emmanuel, where eight Israelis died in a bombing and gunfire ambush, Israel Radio said. Earlier reports spoke of relatives of suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Tel Aviv on July 17, killing five bystanders, but the relatives were not named.
Expelling relatives from the West Bank to Gaza is a new measure the Israeli Security Cabinet approved in an attempt to deter Palestinians from carrying out suicide bomb attacks. Last month Israeli forces arrested 19 relatives of suicide bombers, apparently intending to expel them to Gaza, but Rubinstein ruled that only those directly involved in the attacks could be punished.
In New York, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said that Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news - web sites) "continues to be deeply concerned by reports that the government of Israel is proceeding with plans to deport from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip relatives of Palestinians known or alleged to be responsible for attacks against Israel."
Israeli troops control seven of the eight main Palestinian centers in the West Bank, moving in after back-to-back suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem June 18-19. The university bombing and a suicide attack the day before were the first bombings in Jerusalem since the incursions.
The devastating bomb attack Wednesday at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was not a suicide attack; rather, a bomb hidden in a bag was placed on a cafeteria table and detonated by remote control, killing seven people and wounding more than 80.
At a tearful ceremony at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, the bodies of two of the American victims were put aboard an El Al Israel Airlines plane that left for New York early Friday.
Simple white wooden caskets held the remains of Benjamin Blutstein, 25, of Susquehanna Township, Pennsylvania, and Janis Ruth Coulter, 36, who worked in New York. At the brief ceremony, U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer said, "Their lives are testimony to the values shared by the U.S. and Israel, lives of religious commitment and tolerance. Terrorists cannot live by these values, so they murder beautiful young people."
The body of Marla Bennett, 24, from San Diego, Calif., is to be flown home on Saturday.
The violent Islamic Hamas took responsibility for the bombing, saying it was retaliation for last week's Israeli air strike in Gaza City that killed a top Hamas commander and 14 other people, including nine children.
In Washington, U.S. President George W. Bush ( news - web sites), who was meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan, said, "I am just as angry as Israel is. I am furious.
"But even though I am mad, I still think peace is possible," the president said.
Hebrew University has 1,500 foreign students at its three campuses, with most concentrated at the Mount Scopus branch in the eastern part of Jerusalem, where the bombing took place.
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
FReegards,
Slings and Arrows
Israel should move to kill immidiate family members, maim distant relatives, destroy all of their belongings, confiscate/freeze any assets, and burn their homes.
This is ruthless, but this is war!
Israeli needs to let terrorists know that the price of acts of violence would be such a high price as not to be worth initiating in the first place.
When little Ahkmed Omar Mohammad decides to put on the plastic explosive belt, he need to know that when his body is identified/discovered that his mother, father, brothers, little sisters, and grandparents will be killed immediately, and that that favorite nephew/niece and uncles will be maimed for life, his family eradicated forever.....
If little Mohammad knows that his blood line will disappear soon after blowing up Jews, he just may never don the belt of explosives.
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