Israeli Incursion Is Uprising’s Largest

Broadening its war against the Palestinians and ignoring U.S. pleas for calm, Israel on Friday carried out its largest invasion of Palestinian territory in the West Bank in more than a year of fighting.

Israeli armor and paratroops backed by helicopter gunships seized and fortified strategic positions throughout the southern tier of the volatile city of Hebron, driving families from their homes and killing at least five people. At least a dozen were wounded.

Much of Hebron was a ghost town Friday. Streets were littered with charred debris, and every storefront was shuttered behind sea-green metal gates as Palestinian residents took cover from the 20 or more Israeli tanks that occupied parts of the town.

“It’s obvious they [the Israelis] are going to stay for a while,” said Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natsheh.

If so, Israel would be in violation of the 1997 U.S.-brokered Hebron accords that turned over most of the city to Palestinian control. Israel maintains that President Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has already violated that and other pacts by failing to keep order and instead promoting terror and violence.

Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Gershon, the Israeli army commander for the West Bank, said his forces will remain in Hebron as long as is necessary to stop the regular shooting at Jews in enclaves below the city; this week two women were wounded. The army publicly insisted that the takeover was temporary.

Sharon Blames ‘Acts of Terror’ by Palestinians

But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made clear this week that the gloves are off and that any restraint in the past is an obsolete policy. Sharon said he is responding to repeated “acts of terror” by Palestinian gunmen despite Arafat’s stated support for a now-dead cease-fire.

Also Friday, an Israeli father of six, Hanaya Ben Avraham, was killed as he was traveling near a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank--the fourth Israeli slain in two days.

Among the dead Palestinians being buried in Hebron on Friday afternoon were two gunmen who had tried to fight off the Israeli invasion.

Another was a 48-year-old nurse killed in his pajamas and robe as he emerged from predawn prayers at a Hebron mosque.

The body of Khassan Abuafifi, the nurse, was wrapped in a shroud of Palestinian and Islamic flags and laid out in the basement morgue of Hebron’s Al Ahli hospital.

Crowds surged to see his and the others’ bodies but parted when a wounded man, Abdul Rahman Amru, was wheeled in on a stretcher. His legs swathed in blood-soaked bandages, Amru wept and reached out to kiss the faces of Abuafifi and another of the dead, Raid Abu Daoud.

Amru also was mourning his nephew, Hazem. He was killed during the incursion, which began about 2 a.m. and erupted into sporadic gun battles between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen from Arafat’s Fatah militia.

“We were asleep when we heard the shooting and the helicopters,” Amru, a thick-bearded 36-year-old farmer, said later from his hospital bed, where he was surrounded by several of his seven brothers and many nephews.

Hazem was killed beside an almond tree when he went out to investigate what was going on, Amru said. The Amrus live in the Wadi al-Harria neighborhood, one of four occupied by the Israelis.

As Amru spoke, one of his nephews strapped an ammunition belt to his waist, hoisted his Kalashnikov rifle and marched out of the hospital room, vowing to avenge the death of Hazem.

Most of the injured who arrived at Al Ahli and two other hospitals were men in their late teens or 20s. In addition to the five people killed during the incursion, a sixth was killed pushing his vegetable cart through Hebron on Thursday afternoon, about 10 hours earlier, hospital officials said. Another man was reported killed later Friday under unclear circumstances.

As many as 40,000 Palestinians may be living in the newly occupied area, according to Natsheh, the Palestinian mayor.

Troops Outgunned Enemy, Officer Says

Before Friday, Israel controlled a portion of the city where 500 Jewish settlers live in three central, heavily guarded enclaves, surrounded by about 130,000 Palestinians. Israel regularly imposed a curfew that confined many Palestinians to their homes for days while the Jewish settlers were allowed to roam freely.

Gershon, the Israeli commander, said the operation was the largest invasion since the current uprising erupted more than a year ago--in terms of number of troops, bulldozing engineers, tanks and the amount of territory seized, which was variously estimated at just under a square mile to twice that size.

Briefing reporters on a rooftop in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, which overlooks Hebron, Gershon said his forces substantially outgunned their enemy.

“I can’t say the Palestinians really challenged us or that their resistance was very heavy,” he said.

Gershon said helicopter gunships served only as backups to the ground forces and did not fire. But his troops--as well as numerous Palestinian residents, including a hospital administrator, Bassem Natsheh--said they saw the U.S.-made choppers fire machine guns and two or three rockets.

An Israeli checkpoint commander posted in the heart of Hebron said troops had seized 24 homes--more than twice the figure given by Gershon. He predicted that Israeli forces will need to stay in the area for two weeks to stop Palestinians from taking potshots at Jewish residents.

“It was time to do this, or it won’t stop,” he said near his heavily fortified barricade.

In the last year of battling the Palestinian uprising, Israel has occupied Palestinian-controlled territory in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, invading key cities and taking up positions around them. Just two days ago, Israeli forces invaded a chunk of the northern Gaza Strip, action taken in response to a deadly Palestinian raid on a Jewish settlement.

Until now, the Israelis have always withdrawn within hours or, at most, a few days, usually under international pressure.

Increasingly, however, neither side of this swiftly escalating conflict, which has claimed hundreds of lives, seems receptive to the curatives of international diplomacy.