Posted on 03/30/2002 5:50:11 PM PST by Pokey78
The ambulancemen were carrying the first body out of the Cairo-Amman bank in the centre of Ramallah when I came across them.
His knees were doubled up in rigor mortis. One of the legs of his green parachute jumpsuit had been burned through to the skin by a round fired at such close quarters that the muzzle flash had ignited the fabric. A gaping wound was visible in his chest - also apparently from a burst of fire from close range. What killed him, however, was the gunshot to his temple.
A few minutes later, the paramedics brought the second body, that of a young man, also in Yasser Arafat's elite guard unit, Force 17.
Someone had taken off his boots, revealing his blue socks. The wounds that he had obviously been clutching when he died were also to his upper body. But what must have killed him, like his colleague, was a shot fired at close range to his temple that had demolished the back of his head.
The third body was of an older man, in his forties, grey-haired with a moustache. Someone had pulled his parachute suit above his head to hide the wound. When the stretcher-bearers put him down, the covering was pulled back. The wound was to the head.
What happened on the third floor of the Cairo-Amman bank at midnight on Friday during Israel's occupation of the Palestinian city of Ramallah can only be surmised. But in the few minutes after Israeli soldiers stormed the Palestinian position, five men were wounded and five men were put to death by the Israelis, each with a single coup de grace administered to the head or throat.
Maher Shalabi, bureau chief of Abu Dhabi television in Ramallah, was in his office in the same building when he heard several bursts of heavy shooting on the floors below. 'I heard heavy shooting; maybe it was an exchange of fire. But I believe this was an execution.'
Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian negotiator, added: 'They were executed in cold blood. This is a clear example of the collective execution policy adopted by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people.'
According to local residents, the dead men were part of a large group of Palestinian policemen who had taken shelter in the building, which also houses the offices of the British council, when the Israeli army entered Ramallah.
The men had taken shelter in the foyer area on the third floor next to a dentist's surgery. Yesterday bullet holes spattered the walls and the floor was flecked with blood. On one wall were large splashes of blood. Elsewhere several bloody trails had been marked along the floor where someone had pulled the bodies towards the lift.
An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers entered the building after Palestinians opened fire from inside and threw a grenade at the force outside.
The coups des graces administered for these five men are a metaphor for what the Israeli incursion is hoping to achieve inside Ramallah. By isolating Arafat within his headquarters, Sharon hopes to decapitate the Palestinian Authority.
Yesterday, inside Arafat's compound, it was clear that, for all the claims of Ariel Sharon, Arafat was neither under threat nor under arrest. Arafat, simply, was surrounded by the Israelis.
As we approached the compound we could see the tanks and armoured personnel carriers ringing his sprawl of offices and barracks. On every side were soldiers taking positions and aiming their weapons.
Approaching closer the Israeli army tried to prevent us following a delegation from the Palestinian solidarity movement into the compound, led by José Bové, the French farmers leader and anti-globalisation protester.
In a surreal touch Bové and his colleagues had marched through the ruins of the town, even as fighting continued. With hands above their heads, and carrying palm fronds as Easter symbols of peace, they approached Arafat's compound with two columns of heavily armed Israeli infantry jogging the last few hundred metres behind.
Seeing Bové, who had marched through the town with a small group of fellow protesters bearing a tray of medicines for those still injured inside Arafat's compound, the soldiers relented and let us enter with him and approach the offices where Arafat was holed up.
Crossing a large car park we could see a three-storey block, its walls splattered with tank fire, two windows blackened by fire with sheets hanging where the occupants had tried to escape the flames.
I followed Bové to the entrance to the offices where Arafat was hiding but was grabbed from behind by an Israeli soldier and pulled away. Arafat may not be a prisoner but it is the Israelis who choose who goes to see the Palestinian chairman.
On every corner yesterday stood Israeli tanks. The devastation that these tanks have wrought inside the Palestinians' most attractive city has to be seen to be believed.
Roads have been dynamited or torn up by tanks. Buildings are burned and shattered. Everywhere there is rubble, spent ammunition and broken glass.
A little later, I met Hossam Sharkawi and Mohamed Awad, two senior officials in the Palestinian Red Crescent who I had met before.
Sharkawi, a co-ordinator for emergency services, told me the Israelis had arrested five of his drivers.
'They have them blindfolded and handcuffed. I cannot understand what the Israelis are thinking. They also used one of our ambulances today as a human shield. They sandwiched it inside a convoy.'
Sharkawi was able to reveal something of life inside Arafat's compound. 'We know there are injured inside,' he said. 'But they have been blocking ambulances entering to give treatment.' How many injured he could not say.
'All that we hear is that there may be between 50 and 100 people trapped with Arafat inside the building, without food, or water or any electricity and no telephone communication.' He shook his head and walked away.
Two man team leader to his partner prior to entering a room: "OK, I'll shoot the lock, you kick the door, I'll throw the grenade, you enter first and low spraying right to left, I'll enter second spraying left to right." Basically, you are trying to double-tap the bloody stumps laying around in the room at this point. War sucks. They (the bleeding hearts) need to learn to deal with it.
The craven bastards used to be pretty good at sending out young men to blow themselves up.
Just as their barely surviving turd-burgling "chairman arafart" is becoming fairly accomplished at sending out young women to do the same kinda stuff.
And at keeping the boys at home to blow him.
The idea that the IDF can root out the bad guys house to house is a chimera. Right on!
The idea that this will tame the Palestinians ignores their mindset. Also true, although noone has never advanced that idea.
It is doomed to failure I suspect, I am sure that your suspicion is correct.
All of the above is undoubtedly true but does not address the real reasons for these (in-, semi-)actions. The unanswered question is, how does one lead a populous with no resolve?
This very question is even more applicable here, in the U.S. Long ago, in mid-1980s, I was saying largely the same thing about leaving unpunished the hijackings, the bombing in Lebanon, later the same about the WTC bombing. My knowledge of the specifics is nowhere near the expertise of people like Pipes who were arguing, even before Congress, that we had to act at the time.
Instead, the country preferred to live in the la-la-land, having convinces itself that it won the Cold War. In 1992, it elected the president who sang it a lullaby, thereby making sure that it would not awaken from its sleep. Now we are paying for all of this.
In sum, the leader's vision and knowledge are not sufficient: he cannot be better than the country he leads. You ascribe to Sharon the illnesses of the country, the population of which is tired of being a hair-length from death. Once tired, it wonders, "There must be another way." In addition, the very same affliction that has befallen the West appears there as well, namely, the multiculturalism and other reincarnations of the Marxist view of the world. Just as Europe prides itself in being post-Christian, the leftist in Israel speak and write about post-Zionist and post-Jewish society.
In all of these places --- Europe, Israel, the U.S. --- the net result is the same: lack of proportionate resolve. In the case of Israel, a tiny country, it is aggravated by the dependence on more powerful entities, such as the U.S. and EU, which tell Israelis what (not) to do.
How much of the above-mentioned factors are under Sharon's control? Your blame should be slightly diffused, thus.
And as for the "shots in the head," that would be standard operating procedure to ensure that the scumbags were dead after they're down.
Me? I hope they shoot more of them.
And who provided you with this false "information?"
Which army are you Sgt. in?
Somebody who understands that he is next in line to die if the bombings don't stop.
Excellent. I like it. I give it my stamp of approval.
I am in my hubris quite confident that this is the only prudent policy for Israel to pursue, both from a security and from a PR standpoint.
Taking Arafat off the stage will help break the current stalemate. Whether his replacement is better or worse, events will move a step closer to closure.
The objective here is to encourage the other side to lay down its arms. That happens when there is clearly no possibility of victory. If everybody on the one side dies, there is nobody from that side to declare victory, is there? Last man standing declares victory by default.
They've been saying this for a long time. In Latin, Spanish, Arabic, German, Russian, Farsi, Californian. You need not worry, Sgt. But thanks for your concern.
What they are doing now is burning deeply into the memories of a generation. If you read a little, you will learn that, when it comes to Jews, "memories" were burned in before any living Jew was born. When, in 1961 (?), the Nazi Eichmann was apprehended and brought to justice in Jerusalem, the Saudi goverment paper referred to him as "Echmann, a close associate of Hitler, who had the honor of killing six million Jews."
Mind you, at that time, the present dat Palestinians and their terrotries are under the Jordanian control, and there is no talk about an independent state whatsoever. That is, until Arafat tries to take over whe whole of Jordan, in response to which the King kills about 20,000-30,000 Palestinians in a matter of weeks. It is then that Arafat's fighters run to Lebanon and destroy that country...
Are you bothered by those memories? Apparently not.
How about the fundamtalist Islamic movement in Syria. The dictator of that country kills 20,000 --- unlike Israel, these people don't destroy unoccupied houses --- in one week. Then he destroys the whole town and paves it turning it into a huge partking lot.
Are these memories terrible enough for you?
How about thuousads of Iraqi Kurds gased by Saddam Hussein --- all, women, children, babies. Where were your concerns about the "memories" then?
Ahh, but we hold the Jews to a different standards. Why? That's self-explanatory: 'cause they are Joooos.
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