Grief engulfs West Bank, Gaza, as Palestinians bury victims of massacre

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday March 09, 2002 16:41 by Khalid Amayreh

Grief engulfs West Bank, Gaza, as Palestinians bury victims of massacre

Grief engulfs West Bank, Gaza, as Palestinians bury victims of massacre

by Khalid Amayreh

Occupied Jerusalem: 9 March, 2002
Palestinians observed a day of mourning Saturday following the death on Friday of more than 50
Palestinians, many of them children, housewives and innocent civilians, in wanton Israeli
rampage in Palestinian towns and refugee camps.

Schools and shops were closed and silent sit-ins and demonstrations were organized in many parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest the
killings and the failure of the international community to protect Palestinians.

In Ramallah, school children, some of whom lost fathers, brothers or friends to the latest Israeli rampage, carried placards reading "Sharon
is killing us and the world is watching."

In Hebron, 45 miles to the south, school boys and girls took to the streets to voice their indignation at the daily killings which claimed the lives of more than 200 Palestinians in less than four weeks.

The kids chanted "death to Sharon" and "death to America." In Dura, 13 km south of Hebron, a student speaker lambasted "America and the West for watching the Hitler of our time (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) carry out his own brand of the final solution against the
Palestinian people."

"Not only Sharon is criminal, the American government is also criminal because it allows, enables and Justifies Sharon's crimes against our
defenseless people for no other reason than hating Palestinians and hating Muslims."

"America hated us before we hated it," said another student in response to a question by a foreign journalist.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army, far from cringing in the face of the bloodshed, kept up a ruthless onslaught in the Biblical town of
Bethlehem where locals reported indiscriminate Israeli shooting on civilian homes.

Hospital sources reported that an Israeli tank fired a shell at a Palestinian civilian car at the Deheishe refugee camp around dawn Friday ,
killing one man and seriously injuring two others.

The incident, which appeared to be an assassination, brings to eight the number of Bethlehem residents killed by the Israeli army in the last 24 hours.

Among the civilians killed by Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem on Friday were a doctor, a school boy and housewife.

In Tulkarm in the northern part of the West Bank, the Israeli army interned as many as 600 Palestinian males aged between 13-50 years.

According to eyewitnesses, the Israeli army printed serial numbers on the forehead of each male and then took them in army trucks to a detention camp.

Palestinian Authority officials condemned the internment as "reminiscent of the way the Nazis treated Jews during the Second World War."

The Israeli army claimed that the detainees were "terrorists," a reference to Palestinian freedom fighters resisting Israeli military occupation and apartheid.

However, the Israeli army admitted Saturday that the vast bulk of resistance activists had fled the camp and that all those who remained were
ordinary civilians.

Asked why the army interned the male population of the Tulkarm camp despite the fact of their noninvolvement in resistance operations, the Israeli spokesman said "we want to make sure that they are not terrorists."

In the meantime, Israeli helicopter gunships attacked public buildings in Nablus and Jabalya Saturday morning, inflicting heavy damage.

Israeli air raids on Palestinian population buildings in the last 18 months destroyed 90% of Palestinian police facilities, government buildings and installations.

The Palestinians, who don't have an army, possess no defenses against Israeli helicopters or, much less, F-16 fighter jets, which Israel has been using heavily against undefended Palestinian targets.