-Caveat Lector-
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
On Behalf Of Andras Riedlmayer
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 12:19 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: "Destroying the terrorist infrastructure"
(cross-posting of comments only permitted)
The "terrorist infrastructure" being targeted by Israeli forces on the
West Bank appears to include, inter alia:
* the civilian population's supply of water, electric power, telephones;
* Palestinian homes and businesses flattened or looted indiscriminately;
* the archives and documents that form the documentary base for a
functioning Palestinian society as well as its historical record;
* centuries-old urban centers, houses of worship, works of art.
None of the above, of course, is as tragic as the loss of human life.
But it is criminal all the same.
As a Palestinian friend, an architect, wrote to me in an anguished message
about the devastation of Nablus and Jenin:
Now I am beginning to understand how the Bosnians and Kosovars
must have felt as they watched their towns and villages being
destroyed. Sharon has destroyed the infrastructure of Palestinian life
itself.
Andras Riedlmayer
==========================
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/104/nation/On_West_Bank_shattered_cities_a
nd_lives+.shtml
The Boston Sunday Globe
April 14, 2000
On West Bank, shattered cities and lives
Water, power, homes hit in antiterror drive
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Correspondent
JENIN, West Bank - Israel's military incursion into the West Bank
has left a swath of destruction that could take years to repair.
Ferocious fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen
has caused hundreds of casualties and transformed six city centers
and at least two refugee camps into moonscapes of shattered buildings,
smoldering craters where houses once stood, smashed power pylons,
gushing water mains, and vehicles crushed beyond recognition under
the treads of onrushing tanks.
Near the Jenin refugee camp Friday, the stench of burning tires,
charred mattresses, and fire-eaten furniture hung heavily in the hot air,
along with an odor of decomposing flesh.
An elderly woman wearing a head scarf sobbed uncontrollably as
she trudged from the ruins near a white truce flag, one of thousands of
people made homeless once again in the region's turmoil.
Streaks of dried blood ran from her ears down along the curve of her
chin. A relative accompanying her, Yusuf Ahmed, said the woman's eardrums
had been ruptured by the concussion of a missile fired by Israeli forces.
''She was already a widow. and now she has lost a son'' in the fighting,
''and her grandson is under arrest,'' said Ahmed, a schoolteacher. ''A
few days ago, people of Jenin led ordinary lives. Now everything is gone.
We have nothing. Palestinians are again dispossessed of all but the
clothing on our backs.''
Such scenes are repeated across the West Bank, a 2,000-square-mile
territory to the west of the Jordan River where more than 2 million
Palestinians live. In a powerful armored thrust that started March 29,
Israeli forces occupied the six Palestinian-administered cities - Jenin,
Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalqilya, and Tulkarem - as well as refugee
camps in Jenin and Balata and dozens of villages and towns.
The aim, Israeli officials say, is to smash what they call a
''terrorist infrastructure'' responsible for a series of suicide attacks
that have killed scores of civilians in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and
other Israeli cities. But a collateral result has been the devastation
of urban centers, businesses, and utilities across the West Bank.
With Israeli operations continuing, there is no way to accurately
assess the damage. But officials of international relief agencies
and the World Bank have said it will take billions of dollars to
rebuild basic public infrastructure.
Foreign observers say that in just over two weeks of fighting and
occupation, Israel has destroyed public buildings, water and sewage
systems, computer networks, and other facilities built over the
past decade with billions of dollars in aid from foreign aid agencies
and governments.
In centers of combat, thousands of power poles have been toppled.
A World Bank official reckoned that 40 percent of the West Bank's
power-carrying capacity has been destroyed, along with most cellular
phone towers and a recently completed fiber optic network.
''This is obviously not just a war against terrorist infrastructure, but
against civilian infrastructure,'' said Peter Holland, a relief official
with Oxfam-Quebec. ''When a single water main is cut in one or two places,
you can accept that it is accidental battle damage. But some mains have
been severed at dozens of points, and that's sabotage of Palestinian
quality of life.''
Heritage, too, has been obliterated or damaged: from the old Turkish
baths in the ancient casbah of Nablus, flattened by Israeli military
bulldozers to clear avenues of advance for tanks and infantry ttacking
Palestinian fighter positions in the old quarter, to the centuries-old
Omar ben al-Khatab Mosque in Bethlehem, scorched by flames and scarred
by shrapnel.
''We have lost forever some precious monuments,'' said a historical
researcher, Jamal Talab, who lives and works in Ramallah.
Manir Salameh, deputy mayor of Bethlehem, estimated that water
and sewage works worth $150 million had been destroyed in the city.
In Ramallah, the Israelis tore the hard drives from 100 computers
at the Education Ministry and trashed all student files, according to
Palestinian authorities.
Some of the destruction has to be pure vandalism: Israeli troops
smashed through the door of Mary Jubran of Ramallah, a 75-year-old
Palestinian Christian. They found no terrorists, but defaced a portrait
of the Virgin Mary, smashed a statuette of the crucified Jesus, and
carted off her stock of two bottles of Chivas Regal, according to
her nephew, Jamil Rabah.
According to Palestinian officials, Israeli troops yesterday ransacked
the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, which holds the office
of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and houses some of Palestine's most
important artworks and historical documents.
The immense damage inflicted during the Israeli offensive - and the
question of who will pay for it - will probably become yet another
obstacle to any peace agreement in a conflict already mired in disputes
over how to achieve a cease-fire and address demands for an independent
Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The United Nations Children's Fund said that more than 3,000 people
have been displaced by fighting at the Jenin refugee camp. An attempt
to bring in a trickle of international aid to Jenin failed yesterday,
as Israel refused passage of a convoy of 25 relief vehicles carring
baby food, mattresses, and emergency medicine. Military officials
cited such security concerns as snipers and booby-trapped explosives.
In the camp, giant D-9 military bulldozers leveled entire blocks of
battle-ravaged structures. The occasional crack of a sniper's rifle,
followed by short bursts of Israeli counterfire, echoed through narrow
lanes. The inhabitants remaining in the camp were without electricy
and water and fast running out of food.
Palestinians say that a massacre occurred in Jenin, with hundreds dead,
and that dozens of bodies were dumped into mass graves and then covered
over by bulldozers. Israeli officials hotly deny the accounts of secret
burials, making the macabre countercharge that Palestinan militants still
at large in Jenin, where minor skirmishes and mop-up operations continued,
are ''hoarding'' bodies of fighters killed in recent action. Israel is
doing all it can to avoid civilian casualties, the officials said.
''We expect they plan to dump [the bodies] into the streets for benefit
of international news cameras,'' said a military spokesman, Moshe Fogel.
''They need an atrocity for propaganda purposes.''
Israel said the situation in Jenin is still too confused to give
an accurate Palestinian body count, but Brigadier General Ron Kitrey
said there have been ''hundreds of casualties,'' including some
dead and wounded civilians. The Israeli army lost 23 soldiers in the
battle and insists that most of the Palestinian dead were fighters.
Israel punched into Jenin and other civilian centers in the West Bank
with uncommon ferocity, often relying on reservists with little training
in close-quarters combat. During the battles for Jenin and Nablus, troops
advanced on militia strongholds by boring through the walls of house after
house, creating ''tunnels of approach'' to avoid exposure to gunfire in
the streets.
The Palestinian radicals seem to have deliberately chosen densely
populated neighborhoods in which to make their bloody last stands,
making civilian deaths inevitable.
Although journalists were allowed in Ramallah at the beginning of the
Israeli offensive, they are now banned from military operation zones.
Still, reporters have slipped past Israeli checkpoints into parts of
Jenin, Nablus, and other scenes of the heaviest fighting.
The lightning Israeli advance has created an arc of destruction across
the West Bank, with Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Tulkarem, and
Qalqiya taking the heaviest damage. Those centers are still under siege
by Israeli forces, although the pitched battles have ended.
''Jenin will go down as one of the black places of history,'' said
Mustafa Barghouthi, an official of the Palestinian Medical Relief
Committee.
In Nablus, the ancient casbah, or old quarter, has been pounded into
piles of brick slag and torn sheet metal by fusillades of missiles fired
from American-made Apache helicopters. Rocket runs by F-16 fighter bombers
gutted old soap factories; Nablus has been famous for fine soaps for
centuries. Bulldozers used in the assault on the old souk, or market,
crushed the antique Merchants Inn, parts of which dated to Roman times.
Hader Masri, manager of a soap factory, pointed to the cracks in
the walls and shattered windowpanes of his home. But he was lucky; the
home of his next-door neighbor was demolished by withering fire from
a hovering gunship. ''We have been living under death,'' Masri said.
''Fire pouring down upon us because the Israelis are so angry.''
In Ramallah and Bethlehem, public archives have been gutted, property
records destroyed, and the infrastructure of Palestinian government,
from computers to police stations, smashed beyond repair.
''The wheel of the economy has been stopped completely,'' said
businessman Walid Najjib, noting that private companies receive no
insurance compensation for damage caused by acts of war. ''No factories
are working. No one is drawing a paycheck. And reconstruction will cost
billions of dollars.''
Israelis insist that not all the damage was done by troops.
Palestinian fighters placed explosives in buildings and roads to
slow advancing infantry. In Nablus, scores of such pipe bombs, still
attached to detonation cords, lie in view.
''Of course, there is damage in a battle, terrible damage,'' said
General Dan Halutz. ''And when the fighting is finished, there must be
a Marshall Plan for the Palestinians. There must be reconstruction,
and Israel will welcome support of the international community.''
Globe correspondent Said Ghazali contributed to this report.
/This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/14/2002./
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