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Surge worthless killing { March 7 2003 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53753-2003Mar6.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53753-2003Mar6.html

A Surge in 'Worthless Killing' in Mideast
Palestinians Say 8 Slain in Shelling

By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 7, 2003; Page A30


JABALYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, March 6 -- Around sunrise today, as Israeli tanks began withdrawing from the northern Gaza Strip after a night of heavy fighting, Adel Abdallah joined dozens of neighbors and a handful of firefighters in a desperate bid to extinguish a blaze raging through an apartment building and store.

From down the street, without warning, Palestinian hospital authorities and witnesses said, a departing tank fired a final shell that slammed into the burning building and spewed shrapnel, killing eight people and injuring at least 60.

Sixteen hours earlier and 90 miles to the north in the Israeli port city of Haifa, 13-year-old Yuval Mendelevich was riding a city bus home from school, chatting on a cell phone with his father, when a Palestinian man blew himself up a few seats away. The force of the explosion and the spray of bolts and metal shards packed in the bomb killed 15 people, including Yuval and eight other schoolchildren.

Mendelevich was among the 27 people killed and Abdallah among about 195 injured in one of the deadliest spurts of violence over the 30 months of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. For Israelis, the goal of the fighting was to improve security. For Palestinians, the aim was to shake off Israeli occupation and, ultimately, win statehood. Survivors on both sides lamented the futility of the bloodletting.

"There is no benefit for either of us from all this violence," Abdallah, 34, said from a hospital bed in Gaza where he was being treated for wounds to his right leg. "We just created [rights] violations on both sides."

"I'm not looking for revenge -- I'm not fulfilled when 11 innocent people get killed in Gaza," Yossi Mendelevich said just before leaving his Haifa apartment to bury his son. "If it's 11 militants, I would be happy. But this worthless killing will not solve anything."

Palestinians and Israelis alike said the bloodshed is sometimes justified, even if it is counterproductive and ultimately self-defeating. They described themselves as locked in a cycle of revenge, where violence fuels hatred and lust for revenge, yet gets them no closer to their goals.

"Who forced us to violence?" said Bahjat Hamad, 42, who lives across the street from the Gaza apartment that was ablaze. "The Israeli tanks will lead to nothing but worse escalation. They know the pressure it creates. Anyone with a mind says, 'I will get out and face the tank instead of dying like a dog in my house.' "

The death toll this year has been unrelenting. So far, 53 Israelis and foreigners have been killed by Palestinians -- the vast majority, 38, in two suicide bombing attacks. Of the 15 others, 12 were Israeli soldiers and three were civilians.

About 140 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since Jan. 1. It is impossible from the statistics to determine how many were civilians and how many were combatants.

The pace of the killings has been steady. Since four Israeli soldiers were killed Feb. 15 when their tank drove over a land mine in the Gaza Strip, 53 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli military campaign in Gaza to crack down on militant groups -- particularly the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. The toll includes eight Palestinians killed on Feb. 16, another 11 on Feb. 18, seven on Feb. 23 and eight on March 3.

In addition to the eight killed and 60 wounded in today's tank blast in the Jabalya Refugee Camp, hospital officials in Gaza said, three people were killed and 60 others were injured in fighting earlier in the morning, bringing the day's toll to 11 dead and 120 wounded.

Against that backdrop, many Palestinians in Gaza said they simply would not put down their weapons, even though some recognized the futility of fighting. "There is no peace, there is no solution but the resistance," said Emad Masri, 18, standing in front of the four-story apartment building that caught fire early today.

Israeli military officials denied that a shell from one of their tanks killed the eight people, although they said that one of their tanks fired a round at a militant who was about to launch a rocket at a tank. But an army spokesman said that incident did not occur on the street where the eight were killed and others injured. According to an Israeli military statement, most of the casualties were caused by explosives detonated by Palestinians from inside the burning building.

That version was emphatically disputed by Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials, some of whom said the Israeli tank fired something similar to a flechette antipersonnel round -- a shell packed with about 1,000 inch-long arrows. An Israeli army spokesman said only "three regular tank shells" were fired during the entire operation in an effort to rout Palestinians accused of attacks against Israel.

Residents said the incident occurred after they thought the Israeli tanks had withdrawn following a night of fighting. They said people had converged on the street to help the firefighters when a tank shell came out of nowhere.

Video footage of the explosions taken by a Palestinian film crew -- reviewed in slow motion, frame by frame -- showed that two firefighters were wrestling with a hose, spraying water on the flaming building, when a projectile hit the building and showered the area with what appeared to be white-hot pieces of shrapnel.

"I was on the balcony because they had withdrawn and I thought it was safe, and then they fired a shell," said Khalil Matter, 37, who lives in the building next door. "This does not help Israeli security. It increases the hatred of the Palestinians."

Late this morning, hundreds of mourners underscored that point as they passed the building during a funeral procession. "Every day there is martyr after martyr," a hoarse voice bellowed over a loudspeaker. "Everyday we say goodbye! We will never give up! We will always resist!"

In Haifa, the times for eight funerals were scrawled on a white board in the tiny concrete Jewish mourning house on the edge of the city's mammoth Kfar Samir cemetery. The service for 13-year-old Yuval Mendelevich was No. 4, at 2 p.m.

Near a flower-ringed grave, dozens of mourners were still standing in line to share condolences and sobs with the boy's family when the next wave of mourners clustered around another nearby hole in the wet clay. They hovered over the body of Mitel Katav, a 20-year-old woman who had finished her mandatory military service a month ago and was on her way home from her new job at a gas station when the bus exploded.

Yuval, with striking blue-gray eyes, was a charismatic student with a love for outdoor adventure. He belonged to a youth group that took two-day treks throughout Israel each month, always with the protection of armed escorts, according to his father. His small bedroom in the family's second-floor apartment was crammed with the accoutrements of a 21st-century teenager: computer, stereo, television, miniature basketball hoop over the door, guitar in the corner, top-of-the line camping tent and hiking shoes in the closet.

He had 23-year-old twin brothers. One of them, Omri, is an officer in the air force. For him, the family tragedy was particularly searing.

"You're fighting against terrorism and it doesn't really matter," he said just before the funeral. "They go and kill your little brother."

One of Yuval's classmates on Egged Bus No. 37 was Abigail Litle, a 14-year-old American-born teenager who had spent almost her entire life in Israel, where her father works for a Baptist ministry.

The Litle family has "lived with the knowledge something like this could happen," said her father, Philip Litle, 43.

"I find grievous problems on both sides," added Litle, a Missouri native and father of four other children. "But trying to correct the problems by blowing up schoolchildren is no solution. What's the point of destroying the lives of civilian people if it really isn't going to change anything?"

Moore reported from Haifa.




© 2003 The Washington Post Company



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