Palestinian gunmen kill 6 in Jewish settlement

Reuters | 6/20/02 | Matt Spetalnick

[kattracks]

JERUSALEM, June 20 (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen killed six 
Israelis, including a mother and three of her children, in a 
raid on a settlement in the West Bank on Thursday, hours after 
Yasser Arafat demanded an end to attacks on Israeli civilians. 
    The gunmen burst into a house in the Itamar settlement and 
opened fire shortly after Israel said it was calling up some 
reserve soldiers to reinforce its incursions into Palestinian 
areas following two suicide bombings in as many days. 
    The Jerusalem bombings, which killed 26 Israelis, prompted 
U.S. President George W. Bush to put off a speech charting a 
course towards Palestinian statehood, apparently concerned it 
could offend Israelis and seem to reward the bombers. 
    Israelis now have lost 32 killed in three major attacks, one 
of Israel's highest death tolls during any three-day period 
during the 20-month-old Palestinian uprising. 
    In the latest attack, two Palestinians infiltrated the 
Itamar settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus and stormed 
into a home, spraying gunfire. 
    "There are six people killed, at least three of them 
children and one of them a woman," a spokesman for the Magen 
David Adom ambulance service said. 
    An Israeli military source said soldiers rushed the house 
and shot dead one of the gunmen, but the second attacker fled as 
a fire erupted inside. 
    Bentzi Lieberman, a settler leader, told Israel Radio the 
father of the family arrived at the scene to "mourn his wife and 
three of his children as he sat by their corpses, watching his 
house burn." A settler security guard was also among the dead. 
    "We are in the middle of a war, a hard war, a cruel war, a 
war that the Palestinian terrorists are carrying out against 
women and children and old people," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel 
Sharon told a meeting of Jewish leaders. 

'COALITION OF TERROR' "We are facing a coalition of terror led by the Palestinian Authority and backed by an axis of evil -- Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and bin Laden," said Sharon, who summoned army commanders to discuss a military response. The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was "a reaction to Israeli fence-building...and to challenge the repeated Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory.". Israel has begun building a 110-kilometre (70-mile) security fence on its West Bank frontier and has vowed to retake and hold some Palestinian territories after the back-to-back suicide bombings. Thursday's attack was the second time militants had struck Itamar in the last month. On May 29, a Palestinian gunman shot dead three teenage students from a Jewish seminary before he was shot dead inside the settlement. The latest Itamar raid occurred just hours after Arafat, under U.S. pressure to rein in militants, issued a personal appeal for a halt to attacks on Israeli civilians in a widely circulated written statement and in comments to reporters. Palestinian radicals had immediately rebuffed the Palestinian president's appeal. Arafat made no mention of stopping attacks on settlers, whom most Palestinians view as part of an army usurping West Bank and Gaza Strip lands they want for a state.

SETTLEMENTS FREQUENT TARGETS Settlements have been frequent targets of militants since the start of their uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000. "I personally, and the Palestinian Authority, are completely against it (the attacks)," Arafat told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah earlier on Thursday. He cautioned that such attacks could result in Israeli forces reoccupying Palestinian-ruled land in the West Bank under a new policy of responding to suicide bombings by retaking and holding such territory. Arafat has made such appeals before but the suicide bombings have not ceased. Militant groups at the forefront of the Palestinian uprising spurned Arafat's plea, saying attacks would go on as long as Israel was killing Palestinian civilians. Israel says it does not target Palestinian civilians but acknowledges they have sometimes been caught up in clashes between troops and militants hunkered down in populated areas. Israel announced its policy of retaking territory transferred to Palestinian self-rule under 1990s interim peace deals after a bomber killed 19 Israelis on a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday. An attack on Wednesday killed seven at a bus stop. Troops entered the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the adjacent Deheisheh refugee camp, and the village of Betounia outside Ramallah early on Thursday, and Tulkarm later in the day.

TROOPS IN WEST BANK They have been in the northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Qalqiliya since Tuesday night. At least 1,404 Palestinians and 547 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt began in September 2000. Bush gave no hint on Thursday he was any closer to giving his Middle East policy speech, telling reporters only that he would deliver it "at the appropriate time". In a phone call with Sharon, Bush on Thursday "expressed his sympathy for the families of those who were victimised in the recent suicide attacks", White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "The president also expressed his determination to pursue peace and to provide for security for Israel and hope for the Palestinian people."

© 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

[MatthewViti]

GOD WILL CURSE THOSE WHO CURSE ISRAEL...WAKE UP BUSH!!!

[Lent]

three of her children,

Filthy stinking Jihadists killing women and children. God give peace to the family of the survivors of this sickening palestinian mayhem.

[germanicus]

Unleash Hellfire on Arafats compound NOW and obliterate all traces of the PA! There is no other choice.

[Travis McGee]

Here's one possible path to peace:

Land for Terror

The IDF shouldn't occupy interior Palestinean cities, even terror nests. Israel does not need to occupy more "islands" in a hostile sea.

Instead, Israel should announce the following policy: after each new terror attack, the IDF will take and hold a 1K wide strip on the PA side of the Green Line. It may be wider or narrower in specific locations as suits the terrain. Push all the muslims eastward out of this 1K strip into the rest of the PA, let Arafat feed and house them.

Turn the 1K strip into a cordon sanitaire, a free fire zone which is as good as the billion dollar mega wall at preventing infiltration, and has the benefit of being moveable eastward as needed. Any non IDF seen in the 1K strip are to be fired upon immediately.

Bulldoze every structure in the 1K strip and truck away the rubble. Leave not one house for the Palestineans to demand to return to. Tell them "you have no house here, this land is lost to you forever. Thank Hamas, Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad for the loss of your land."

After each new attack, move the cordon sanitaire strip 1K eastward, and permit Israelis to settle the now fallow land previously taken.

Eventually the Palestineans will either revolt against their terrorist organizations, or they will find themselves all in refugee camps in a few tiny patches right against the Jordan River.

(The giant billion dollar wall now being built is a mistake: it grants permanent control over the land on the other side to the Palestineans, no matter what future terrorist atrocities they commit. They need to lose "land for terror", and the billion dollar wall cannot move.)

[Cato the Censor]

Nuke the Palies!

[Travis McGee]

"There is no other choice."

Tell me what you think about "Land for Terror" as I outline at #5.

[Lent]

Excellent idea which I've advocated myself. For every death more land. And its irrevocable too!

[Travis McGee]

Yes. Announce the policy, then do it. Annex the land forever as reparation for terror.

[dennisw]

Unleash hell on Mecca/Medina/Qum. Kick in the door and the Islamic house of cards will tumble on down.

[sheik yerbouty]

They are a cancer which must be resected!

[Teacher317]

And its irrevocable too!

I think this is the weak part of an otherwise outstanding idea. The "permanent" loss of lands will just encourage the lunatics even further, and keep any sane Muslim voices (please, let there be some soon!) from being heard.

Maybe the slight revision of "10 square mile - years" for every death... one innocent is killed (we can even leave the IDF troops out, as they are 'legitimate' targets in this 'war'), and they lose one square mile for ten years, or ten square miles for one year. With the inevitable body count, it leaves wiggle room for logistical concerns (where to find the next patch of land to take when they, Lord forbid, kill 25 more kids on a schoolbus), it leaves room for some same Palestinain voices (hey, we should HOPE for some, anyway, whether they exist or not!) to say, "ENOUGH! If we stop now, we might get the land back soon!", and it leaves the UN morons no room to say, "See? Those darn Israelis are trying to take over the whole Middle East forever!" It will also encourage the thugs to target legitimate targets, which I bet the IDF would strongly approve of (given the alternative). It encourages more strategic homocides, rather than maximizing body-count (again, better than what we have now).

[jwfiv]

"Annex the land forever as reparation for terror."

Really an excellent choice of words, good policy and a very self-evident concept. The word 'reparations' is rather in vogue these days, how can Chris Matthews and the Euro-pimps say no to that?

"Annex the land forever as reparation for terror."

Thanks, Travis...you're a poet.

[Travis McGee]

Thanks, I've given it a lot of thought.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

You know, I'm sick about hearing about the poor Palestinian civilians that die when Israel defends itself. What about the Israeli civilians that are the primary target of these cowards?

To H*LL with Palestinian civilians. That is, if there are any.

[Sabertooth]

For every death more land. And its irrevocable too!

Let's call it "Desurrender."

Israel never should have surrendered any of the land beyond the 1922 League of Nations Mandate. Go back to the time of Joshua, and whenever Israel trades part of the Promised Land for promises of peace, they are soon attacked from the land by those with whom they'd made covenant.

Let Jordan be "palestine."

[CONSERVATIVE ALWAYS]

I guess Bush wiil send Colin Powell back to the M.E. and call for peace again. LOL. Um - Do you think Bush knows that Arafat is a terrorist?

[freepy smurf]

Here's an idea. Let the Philistines create an actual country. Isreal can even recognize it and all the other official nonsense. Then, after the next terrorist attack, and you know it won't stop through diplomacy, Isreal can declare actual war on the cretinous curs and wipe them out in legal fashion and using the dumbest of bombs.

[junta]

Sound thinking to a point. If it were done and millions were thrown out of the West Bank then the terrorist war would be taken to Jews outside of Israel (think Munich, think France a month ago), all in all it would not be a final answer. If this was done it could lay the seeds of destruction for the Left in the West as it is currently composed. With that said I'm sure the Israeli elite have thought it over and have concluded the same thing and since its biggest benefactor America is going to swing to the Left thru its immigration policy Israel needs the Left as is and not completely fractured by its actions.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Perhaps Bush is waking up. Cancelling his "Pal state" speech is at least an indication that his administration is not as craven as we have feared at times.

Of course, it'd take a pretty dense bureaucracy not to see that appeasement does not taste too good when washed down with blood.