Israeli "Warning" Injures 100, Kills 2

by Ben Lynfield

The war-ravaged public here views Israel as its enemy, not the Islamic movement that carried out deadly suicide bombings against Israeli civilians over the weekend. And that sense is only being reinforced by Israel's escalation of its already devastating army practices.

The Israeli military Dec. 4 staged a terrifying display of just how vulnerable the Palestinian Authority and population are to its aircraft. It came hours after a cabinet decision to significantly escalate what Israel considers to be a war on terrorism, but which Palestinians experience as a campaign of attacks against their entire population.

A 15-year-old boy and a police officer were killed in Gaza City airstrikes and doctors said more than 100 people were injured, many of them youngsters.

Israeli fighter aircraft circled around Yasser Arafat's compound here, streaking across the sky and then dropping down in mock attacks.

The message, as in the other Israeli military actions throughout the day, was clear to both Arafat and the Palestinian public: we have the capability to obliterate you.

"This is normal before the actual attack," Col. Ahmad Omran, a pilot and a director-general in the PA's civil aviation authority, said about the mock bombings. He was standing outside a terminal that was badly damaged during Israeli helicopter gunship attacks yesterday in which two helicopters used by Arafat to reach the West Bank were destroyed.

Even stalwarts of Arafat's Fatah movement voiced opposition to any crippling of Hamas and praised, or at least expressed understanding, for its suicide attacks, including one in Haifa on Dec. 2 that killed 15 people on a bus. The Israeli cabinet decision said: "The government has determined that the Palestinian Authority is an entity that supports terrorism and must be dealt with accordingly."

At al-Azhar University in downtown Gaza City, Hasan Safi, a Fatah student leader, said: "Hamas is not the enemy. Hamas is an integral part of the Palestinian people combatting occupation. The Israeli government is the real enemy of the Palestinian people."

"Every political grouping has its own tendency, but we are now doing one thing -- confronting Israeli terrorism against the Palestinian people," said Safi.

Jamila Saydam, a Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said that Israel was the cause for the Hamas bombing attack in Haifa.

"Israel is killing our sons every day," she said. "Continuing this killing pushes the Palestinian extremists to undertake massacres, or what is called massacres but are not really massacres. He who carries out massacres, receives them back. If Israel stops its massacres all the Palestinian factions will be with peace, but if killing continues every day, these [suicide] operations will continue."

Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said the PA's arrests "are rejected regardless of whether they are for a short or long period. They are not acceptable to the Palestinian people."

"The authority does not want to destroy Hamas and Hamas does not want to destroy the authority," he said. "We are in the same trench. The enemy wants to destroy us all."

As Yassin spoke, rockets fired from Israeli helicopters could be heard whooshing through the air nearby and then exploding. Yassin said that suicide bombings against Israel should continue. "I don't have F-16's or Apache helicopters, missiles or an army. Just people defending themselves," he said.

At the Islamic University, a stronghold of Hamas, there were differences of opinion as to how far the PA might take its campaign of arrests. "Some of the people in the PA intend to damage Hamas while others are just trying to make a display for the Israelis," said student council chairperson Ahed Abu al-Atta.

Those who want to damage Hamas seem to be stronger," he said. But another student disagreed, saying the PA's steps against Hamas "are mostly a propaganda display. They know that even if they do what Sharon is asking, he will give them nothing. So why should they get into a confrontation for nothing? Why should they kill themselves?"

The bureaucrats of the PA's Finance Ministry ran out of their five-story building, neckties fluttering in the wind, as the Israeli jets circled. They were afraid that they too would become targets.

Later the planes attacked for real, firing missiles at an installation of the Palestinian Preventive Security, which was once the mainstay of PA security cooperation with Israel. Reports said that children ran from a nearby school after the first missile hit and dropped to the ground when warplanes fired another missile.