August 29, 2001
Israeli Forces Take Over Arab Areas in West Bank
By CLYDE HABERMAN
BEIT JALA, West Bank, Aug. 28 — Israeli tanks and soldiers took control of parts of this Palestinian town south of Jerusalem today in an operation that Israel called necessary to protect its citizens but that Palestinian officials denounced as a "reoccupation" of areas supposedly under their control.
The foray into Beit Jala was the first time that Israel had entered a Palestinian-ruled zone for an indefinite stay, a new benchmark in a Middle East crisis that has been deteriorating by the day, with no hint of imminent political talks that might put a lid on the violence.
Israeli forces took over at least five buildings that the army said had been used for months by snipers firing on Gilo, a neighboring Israeli area on Jerusalem's southern edge.
Soldiers also moved into a Lutheran church compound, using its top floors to shoot at Palestinian gunmen who, despite the Israeli assault, fired throughout the day on both Gilo and the Israeli troops here. Tonight, a mortar round landed near an unoccupied community center in Gilo. In the fighting here today, a Palestinian security officer was killed and more than half a dozen Palestinians were wounded.
Just outside the Lutheran church, an Israeli tank took up a position on Virgin Mary Street, in the heart of town. Church officials said that some 45 children living in an orphanage on the grounds were forced to seek safety all day in a basement.
"The situation now is very dangerous for us," said Albert Hani, a teacher at the compound. "There is a lot of firing from our church."
On Monday, Israel took its policy of pinpoint killings to a new level by firing airborne missiles that left the head of a radical Palestinian faction dead in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Thousands of people in Ramallah, vowing revenge and firing guns in the air, formed a funeral procession today for Mustafa Zibri, the most prominent Palestinian killed by Israel in years.
Israeli officials said that Mr. Zibri, 63, known as Abu Ali Mustafa, was a sponsor of car bombings and other terrorist acts. Therefore, they said, he was a legitimate target in what they call their "active self-defense," just like other Palestinians killed for the same reason, and in much the same way, in recent weeks.
But Mr. Zibri, whose Arabic name can be rendered several ways in the West, was not just another "missile on two legs," as suicide bombers have been called here. He was also a man of high political standing as leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and as a senior figure in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, led by Yasir Arafat.
His killing — Palestinians call it an assassination — raised the stakes, people on both sides agreed. In Washington, the State Department cautioned that the Israeli tactic was inflaming the conflict, which entered its 12th month today.
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there were vows of anti-Israel reprisals from an array of Palestinian factions, including Islamic groups who had little use for Mr. Zibri's Marxist views.
The Israeli army's move on Beit Jala signaled another turning point in a tactic that itself is relatively new: thrusts into autonomous Palestinian areas that are supposed to be fully under the control of Mr. Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.
Those forays became standard policy a few weeks ago, a reaction to a string of killings of Israelis by Palestinians, including suicide bombers. But until now, the targets tended to be police headquarters and other official buildings that the army knew had been evacuated. And the raids were in-and-out operations lasting only a couple of hours.
This time, the army seized parts of Beit Jala with no indication of when it intended to leave. The action raised the possibility that if the situation deteriorates even further, Israel is prepared to take over other autonomous Palestinian areas, at least for a while.
Israeli army officers and government officials insisted that they had no intention of once again occupying Beit Jala. "Reoccupation" was a word used today by several officials in the Palestinian Authority, which gained control of stretches of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under now-tattered peace agreements signed in the mid-1990's.
The Israeli cabinet secretary, Gideon Saar, said that "there is no intention of staying in Beit Jala." Nonetheless, he and other officials said that the army would stay put until there was no more shooting at Gilo, a constant Israeli problem for months.
"The Palestinian Authority did not do its job in this area," said Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, the army commander in the West Bank. "Therefore, after restraining ourselves for a very long period of time, we were forced to penetrate Beit Jala."
Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that "no nation could accept a situation by which its very capital came under repeated fire, day in and day out — not once, not twice, but dozens of times."
The battle for Beit Jala overshadowed other fighting today, including a brief army lunge into a refugee camp at Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. Twelve people were wounded and 15 buildings were knocked down in that maneuver.
Late tonight, Israeli tanks were reported to have entered another Gaza refugee camp, Deir el Balah, touching off gunbattles.
Earlier today, at least three Palestinians were reported killed in several clashes with Israelis. During the weekend, it was Israelis who were dying in larger than normal numbers — seven killed in drive-by shooting and a Palestinian raid on an army base in Gaza. The seesaw nature of death has been a steady feature of the conflict.
Beit Jala, next door to Bethlehem, is a predominantly Christian, relatively prosperous town of about 10,000 people. With the gunbattles that have raged between here and Gilo, many residents have fled to safer precincts.
Jalil Abu Dayyeh had enough after Israeli tanks rolled in today. He and his wife, Claudette, put their two children in the family car and headed toward a nearby village. "I will take them to their grandparents," Mr. Abu Dayyeh said. "It is safer there. My kids were scared. Not only them. I'm scared, too."
This has been a troubled place since Palestinians from outside the town took up positions in buildings and began using Gilo for target practice.
To most Israelis, Gilo is another Jerusalem neighborhood. And its people have their own fears. "I'm a human being," an elderly man in Gilo said this evening. "And I'm scared."
But Gilo sits on land that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, and so, to Palestinians, it is a settlement on occupied territory and therefore a legitimate target in this conflict.
Weeks ago, Mr. Sharon warned that he had had enough of the shooting and that he would take serious action if it did not stop. For a while it did. But it resumed Monday night, heavily, after the killing of Mr. Zibri. That made the strong Israeli response today almost inevitable.
Those who were not looking to get out of town stayed indoors, a result of both a curfew and a three-day mourning period for Mr. Zibri.
In her house, Razan Rabiyeh, 12, held a Bible and a small wooden cross. She said she had also clutched them during the night when the Israeli attack began. "I lay on the ground carrying them in order to feel protected," she said.
While many Beit Jala residents have long been upset with the Palestinian gunmen who made them vulnerable, the raid today produced nothing but anti-Israel solidarity. Asked if he was angry with the gunmen, Bashia Rabiyeh, Razan's father, said: "What are you talking about? You're talking about a rifle facing a tank. It's not fair to compare."
Concern was also raised about Israel's seizing of the Lutheran church compound.
General Yitzhak said that Israel's "goal is to complete the operation without hurting innocent Palestinian people or the religious sites, which we are sensitive to." But that phase of the Israeli attack especially outraged some Palestinians.
Bishop Munib A. Younan, the Lutheran Bishop in Jerusalem, said no shooting at Israelis had ever taken place from the church's buildings in Beit Jala, and he demanded that the army withdraw. In Jerusalem, the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, an interfaith group, also expressed concern about Israel's presence in the church compound, and urged "both sides to return to the path of sanity and negotiations through dialogue."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
