Posted on 06/24/2002 6:32:16 AM PDT by kattracks
RAMALLAH, West Bank, June 24 (AFP) - The sun is shining in Ramallah, but the streets are deserted and the shutters on houses are closed, making it look like a ghost town. The only thing you can hear is the rumblings of Israeli military vehicles which have taken over the city.
More than four dozen tanks, armoured personnel carriers and jeeps, backed by black-as-night Apache attack helicopters, invaded Ramallah overnight.
They have for a third time surrounded and sealed off the battered Muqataa headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and imposed a curfew on all the 50,000 residents of the West Bank's main city.
The Israeli forces met with no resistance when they moved in.
Seven or eight tanks have taken up positions around Arafat's headquarters, and a bulldozer has blocked off the five entrances by piling up burned out cars, large rocks and rubble.
It means that Arafat is once again a prisoner in his headquarters.
He was held captive there for five weeks in a siege that ended on May 2 only after the jailing of militants wanted in connection with the assassination of an Israeli minister, and again for three days earlier this month in response to more militant attacks.
However, the real damage was done during a heavy assault on June 6 when parts of the compound -- a jumble of several unremarkable concrete and brick buildings which make it look like a small college -- was dynamited and hit by tank shells.
In this latest raid, the army has again taken over three or four buildings near the headquarters. A tank shell has smashed a hole in a wall in a white concrete building.
From time to time a gunshot rings out in the city. The normally bustling downtown, often the scene of demonstrations, is empty and all the shops are shut. Soldiers in army jeeps use loudspeakers to order people to stay inside.
Red Crescent Society ambulances still drive through the city, but slowly and with their headlights blazing. "We've had no problems with the army so far, " said one ambulance driver, Karim Osmar, "there are no wounded for now."
Journalists risk breaking the curfew now and again, but travel in their armoured vehicles which are all clearly marked with the word "TV" in tape.
Driving through the city, Israeli armoured vehicles have taken up positions. Six are posted on the southern road which leads to Jerusalem, which has also been barricaded.
No vehicles are allowed to enter or leave the city.
Suddenly around one corner, a middle-aged woman appears. She is walking quickly and her face is creased with worry.
"I have to get home," she says without stopping.
And then she turns and asks the journalists if they know whether the troops will be here for long this time.
"They should leave," she says. "They come to do bad things and leave happy, it's always like that."
On the terrace of a nearby house, 11-year-old Mohammed and his seven-year-old sister Aisha watch a bulldozer with an Israeli flag fluttering in the wind turn over car wrecks like they play with their toys.
He says he's "not afraid of the Israeli soldiers." But hearing gunshots in the distance, his sister begins to cry.
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