Israeli Checkpoints Grow Ever Deadlier

For Palestinians, Israeli military checkpoints have long been a hated symbol of occupation, a place where they are humiliated by troops and sometimes shot. For Israelis, and especially for soldiers and Jewish settlers, checkpoints are increasingly becoming the new front line in a 17-month-old conflict.

Four people--two Israelis and two Palestinians--were killed Monday at checkpoints. The wounded included two pregnant women--a Palestinian and an Israeli--who survived to deliver healthy girls.

The Israelis were Jewish settlers ambushed by Palestinian gunmen as they sat in their car at a roadblock, awaiting entry into Nokdim, the West Bank settlement south of Jerusalem where they lived. One of the dead men in the car was the father of the pregnant Israeli woman.

One of the Palestinians killed was driving his wife, in the throes of labor, to the hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus. Israeli soldiers shot and killed the man after he ignored their orders to halt and ran the roadblock, they said. The wife, who was injured along with her father-in-law, said they heard no such orders.

It was the second time in 24 hours--and at the same military barricade and under near-identical circumstances--that soldiers shot a pregnant Palestinian woman en route to the hospital. The woman shot Sunday also delivered a healthy girl.

The other Palestinian killed Monday was a 15-year-old girl who the army said charged a roadblock outside the West Bank town of Tulkarm, brandishing a knife. She refused to stop and was shot; her father later told reporters in Tulkarm that she left behind a note saying she wanted to become a “martyr”--to die for the Palestinian cause.

The shootings dramatized what human rights organizations and some Israeli army officers say is the problematic use of military roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The army says checkpoints enhance security for Israelis. But soldiers have become extremely jittery, and vulnerable, at checkpoints, after a campaign by Palestinian fighters to step up their attacks throughout the territories and target troops and settlers. And the proliferation of checkpoints further punishes, antagonizes and endangers Palestinian civilians.

In a separate attack Monday, a Palestinian opened fire on Israelis crowding a bus stop on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem during the evening rush hour. At least 10 Israelis, including three police officers, were wounded. The shooter was critically injured, and Israel promised retaliation after a militia linked to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction claimed responsibility for this and the attack on the settlers.

The army launched a review of its use of checkpoints after Palestinian gunmen last week staged their single deadliest attack on Israeli soldiers since the latest intifada erupted in September 2000. Six soldiers were killed at the Ein Arik checkpoint near Ramallah, and the gunmen escaped. It was a devastating blow to the military.

Army ombudsman Brig. Gen. Uzi Lev-Tzur testified before a parliamentary committee Monday that troops’ complaints about the conditions at roadblocks had risen significantly and that many soldiers were “shooting out of fear.” An army spokesman denied that soldiers were trigger-happy and said Israeli forces had a legitimate reason to suspect vehicles that approached in the middle of the night in hostile areas such as Nablus.

‘Surprise’ Checkpoints Often Most Dangerous

The two incidents affecting pregnant Palestinians involved a military position that came into existence only in the middle of last week, when the army moved its tanks into shooting range of Nablus’ Balata refugee camp, a bastion of Palestinian militancy.

“Surprise,” or ad hoc, checkpoints--which the army favors because they are less of a target--often cause the most trouble and are the most disruptive to Palestinian traffic.

About 2 a.m. Monday, Mohammed Hayek was driving his wife, Maysoun, from their village to the Nablus hospital. They approached a checkpoint, one that they were familiar with, at the village of Hawwara, south of Nablus. The soldiers there inspected Maysoun’s belly, she recalled later, to make sure she wasn’t packing explosives.

The soldiers waved them through.

“We thought that was the last checkpoint [before Nablus],” Maysoun said. “It always has been.”

Five minutes later, as the car turned onto the main road into Nablus, she said she suddenly heard shooting. Her husband was hit in the neck and killed. She crouched on the back floor, and the bullets grazed her shoulders. Her father-in-law was critically injured before the soldiers finally held fire.

“I started screaming: ‘Baby! Baby!’ so the soldiers would understand,” she said.

She lay on a stretcher, cold and bleeding, while the soldiers searched her and administered first aid. Then they delivered Maysoun, 22, to a Palestinian ambulance that rushed her to the hospital, where she gave birth within minutes of her arrival. She named the baby Fida, Arabic for “sacrifice.”

An army spokesman said the soldiers first shouted at the Hayek vehicle when it approached and then fired in the air. They fired at the car only after Hayek broke through the roadblock, the spokesman said.

Esam and Shadyah Shehadeh went through a similar experience about 22 hours earlier, clearing one checkpoint only to come under fire at a second, unexpected barricade. Esam can speak Hebrew and was able to shout at the soldiers to stop shooting. Shadyah was shot through the chest but eventually reached the hospital and delivered a girl.

Esam said the soldiers who did the shooting “never said they were sorry.”

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that has chronicled problems at checkpoints, said 11 Palestinians had been killed trying to cross roadblocks between September 2000 and last week. Four more were killed in the last seven days. And 25 died when delayed by soldiers as they tried to reach a hospital or doctor for medical treatment, B’Tselem said.

B’Tselem director Jessica Montell said that although Israel was justified in preventing Palestinians from entering Israel, the problem was that scores of roadblocks dot the West Bank and Gaza and are designed to impede Palestinian travel within Palestinian territory.

An army officer using the pseudonym “Ilan” told Israeli radio that he and his men felt like sitting ducks at roadblocks. So one day he abandoned his position at a barricade just north of Jerusalem.

“We’ve reached the state where we shoot out of fear,” he said. “We use these bullets as a kind of shield, a wall, because we don’t have a wall or concrete to protect us. . . . In the end, the guys become trigger-happy and very jumpy.”

Ilan was sentenced to 28 days in the brig for desertion.

Despite Killings, Settlers Favor Stops

The two settlers killed Monday were among dozens who had been gunned down on West Bank and Gaza roads. Their car had slowed at the Israeli checkpoint guarding the entrance to Nokdim when they came under fire, an army spokeswoman said. The pregnant woman, Tamar Lifschitz, 33, was rushed to a hospital, where she gave birth by caesarean section while doctors also treated her gunshot wounds. Her 5-year-old daughter, also in the car, was not harmed.

Lifschitz’s father, Avraham Fish, 60, was killed. The other man killed was identified by Israeli media as Aharon Gorov, another resident of the settlement.

Settler leaders said the army, far from removing checkpoints, should redouble them and tighten the siege on Palestinian towns.

“This terror attack proves that removing the roadblocks and allowing the Arabs free movement on the roads endangers lives,” Zviki Bar Hai, head of a settlers governing council in the Hebron region, told Israeli radio.

Later Monday, the shooting at the bus stop in Neve Yakov, on land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed as part of Jerusalem, sent motorists, pedestrians and waiting passengers fleeing in panic. The assailant raked the crowd with gunfire until police shot at him “from every direction” and two passersby jumped him, witnesses said.

Nir Ben-Simhon told Israeli television how he subdued the Palestinian: “We snatched his gun to kill him, but he was all out of bullets. We started to beat him up terrible. We had a knife, and we started to stab him too.”

Finally, Ben-Simhon grabbed a pair of handcuffs from a wounded police officer and slapped them on the man.