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Force to nablus { August 2 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/international/middleeast/02MIDE.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/international/middleeast/02MIDE.html
August 2, 2002
Big Israeli Force Heads Into Nablus in Reprisal Raid
By JAMES BENNET and JOEL GREENBERG
JERUSALEM, Friday, Aug. 2 — A large Israeli Army force swept into the Old City of Nablus early today to hunt for Palestinian militants in what appeared to be the start of military retaliation for a bombing on Wednesday in a cafeteria at Hebrew University in Jerusalem that killed seven people — including five Americans — and wounded more than 80.
"Nablus serves as a focus of activity of terror groups, led by Hamas and Fatah," the Israeli Army said in a statement. "These groups have recently carried out many terror attacks in the West Bank, including suicide attacks."
Israel Radio said that infantry and armored forces, backed by helicopters, were raiding the Old City to carry out searches and arrests, and that there had been exchanges of gunfire in which a few Palestinians had been hit.
The incursion was the largest since Israel took over seven of the eight main West Bank cities and towns starting June 20.
Residents reported that the Israeli force included more than 100 tanks and armored vehicles — including bulldozers — and that troops had entered the maze of alleyways in the old heart of the city, known as the casbah. There were unconfirmed reports of two Palestinians killed in Nablus.
A member of Hamas, the militant Muslim group that took responsibility for the bombing at the university, was reported killed in Salem, a neighboring village. A neighbor told the Associated Press that the Hamas member, Amjad Jubur, 28, had been handcuffed and then shot by Israeli soldiers.
Israeli security officials, quoted on Israel Radio, said that Nablus has served as an operational center for Hamas. Press reports said that Israeli officials believe that Hamas militants based in Nablus were responsible for the attack.
One of the Israeli officers commanding the raid told the radio that the aim of the operation was "to continue attacking the terrorists everywhere in order to prevent them from reaching Israel." He added: "We are surrounding the area of the casbah and we will go house to house until we find all the terrorists that have attacked inside Israel."
Military officials said that the operation would last "as long as necessary" to complete that mission.
In sorrow and anger early this morning, American and Israeli officials jointly shepherded two spare wooden coffins onto an El Al airplane, sending two of the five Americans slain in a bombing Wednesday home to be buried.
The solemn airport tableau, of mingled flags and envoys side by side with friends of the dead, seemed to crystallize the emerging diplomatic reality of the conflict, of American and Israeli leaders united against a Palestinian leadership, under Yasir Arafat, that they accuse of condoning, if not fomenting, terrorism.
President Bush on Thursday described himself as furious over the bombing, and the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, said: "It is not enough that Palestinians and other Arabs have condemned this act of terrorism. It is absolutely imperative that they work actively to stop terrorism immediately."
Mr. Kurtzer laid a wreath outside the cafeteria, which like the building that houses it is named after Frank Sinatra, a donor to the university. "The terrorist murderers, those who sent them, and those whose action and inaction contributed to this despicable act have descended to a new depth of depravity," said Mr. Kurtzer, himself a graduate of Hebrew University.
By "inaction" he seemed to be implicating Mr. Arafat, but by "action" he was referring to the Islamist group Hamas. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, prompting questions in Israel over whether the group was shifting tactics away from using suicide bombers and seeking to widen its circle of civilian victims to encompass non-Israelis.
In an interview on Thursday in Gaza City, one political leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, expressed regret for the deaths of Americans. But he called the attack a success nonetheless and predicted more of the same.
Hamas said it had detonated the bomb in retaliation for Israel's killing last week of a top leader of the group. Fourteen other Palestinians, including nine children, died in the Israeli raid, on Gaza City.
The bombing of the university, a fenced and guarded campus, also left Israelis wondering what more they could do to protect themselves, since the Israeli Army has already seized seven of eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
Sadly accustomed to the unbiased way such terror attacks mete out death and injury, Israelis seemed more stunned that the university had been bombed than that Americans had died. Other Americans, generally with joint Israeli citizenship, have died in the 22-month conflict.
The police said the bomb had been left behind on a table, then detonated with a cellular telephone.
The assault followed a suicide bombing on Tuesday that wounded five people in the first such attack here in more than a month, since Israel started its latest West Bank offensive in response to back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem that killed 26 people.
Despite heightened warnings, thousands of Jerusalemites flocked tonight to a downtown pedestrian mall for a food festival, in a spirit of defiant camaraderie and, perhaps, determined forgetfulness. Amid smells of roasting steak, cardamom, and falafel, they passed through a screen of security officers who checked their bags and scanned them for weapons.
Nearby, hundreds more gathered for a concert in a park by a reggae band. Over and over as the band warmed up this afternoon and children swarmed over an adjacent playground, the lead singer sang one line, in English: "There is no political solution."
Early Thursday, an Israeli man was found, bound and shot to death, near the West Bank city of Tulkarm. The killing, which Israeli military officials described as a lynching, occurred in the Buds of Peace industrial zone, where Israeli businessmen employ Palestinian workers.
Overnight Thursday, Palestinians reported that Israeli soldiers had shot dead a 9-year-old girl near a settlement in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army said it knew of no such incident. The army said its soldiers had exchanged fire with Palestinians in several areas of Gaza.
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