Steve Quayle News Alerts

August 5, 2002
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM –– Israel announced a "total ban" on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank on Monday and sealed off a chunk of the Gaza Strip with tanks in response to Palestinian attacks on Israelis that killed 13 people over 24 hours.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said restrictions on Palestinian movement would be tightened further, and that troops were planning operations to "maintain a much bigger closure than what we are doing now."

The new restrictions were imposed after a bloody 24-hour period in which a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up an Israeli bus and gunmen carried out shooting attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Thirteen people were killed in these attacks, including 11 Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, and two women from the Philippines. Three assailants also died.

Under the new ban, Palestinians will not be able to drive in the northern half of the West Bank, between the towns of Nablus, Jenin, Qalqiliya, Tulkarem and Ramallah, the army said. Some movement will be permitted in the southern West Bank, including the towns of Hebron, Bethlehem and Jericho.

"We are in a situation of total closure in the area of Samaria," Ben-Eliezer said, using the biblical name for the northern West Bank. "Nobody enters and nobody leaves. There is no movement between the towns and villages."

Stringent restrictions on Palestinian travel have been in place since the outbreak of fighting in September 2000, with Palestinians confined to their communities for extended periods as Israeli troops try to prevent terror attacks.

Palestinians trying to get to jobs and schools often use dirt roads to get around military checkpoints. The military said Monday's announcement of a "total ban" on Palestinian traffic meant that existing blockades would be strictly enforced. Exemptions would be made in humanitarian cases, the military said.

In Gaza, about 25 tanks took up positions on the main north-south road, cutting off the southern town of Rafah and an adjacent refugee camp from the rest of the strip. The army said it imposed the blockade to prevent attacks on Israelis. Rafah has been a flashpoint of violence.

Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 27 people since an Israeli airstrike on July 22 killed leading Hamas militant Salah Shehadeh and 14 Palestinians, many of them children, in Gaza.

The attacks – which came despite Israel's occupation of seven of the eight main West Bank towns – raised questions about the army's dwindling repertoire of responses. In trying to deter attacks, the army demolished nine homes of Palestinian assailants Sunday, reviving a practice abandoned several years ago. Another proposed deterrent, the deportation of relatives of attackers, is being challenged in court. Ben-Eliezer said he hoped to go ahead with the deportations.

In the latest violence, a West Bank shooting early Monday, an Israeli couple was killed when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a car on the main road between Ramallah and Nablus. Two of the couple's children were wounded and a third, an 8-month-old baby, was unhurt. Also Monday, the army continued its search of wanted Palestinians and bomb factories in Nablus, the West Bank's largest city.

In Sunday's deadliest attack, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus packed with soldiers and civilians. Nine passengers and the bomber were killed.

The bombing, at Meron Junction in the Galilee region of northern Israel, turned the green bus into a fireball, charring the insides and ripping the metal panels as if they were ribbons. The dead included three Israeli soldiers, two Filipino women and one Arab Israeli woman. Thirty-seven people were injured, two critically.

"There was a lot of screaming, horrible screaming inside the bus," said Avraham Freed, who owns a restaurant near the blast site. "I saw one person on the ground next to the bus – bodies, parts of bodies, people jumping through the windows."

The bus driver, Shmuel Ronen, escaped with light wounds – just as he did six years ago when the bus he was driving in Jerusalem was bombed.

The Islamic militant group Hamas, which has vowed revenge for the July 22 airstrike in Gaza, claimed responsibility. Hamas said the bombing was the second retaliatory strike for Shehadeh's killing, following a Wednesday bombing at Jerusalem's Hebrew University that killed seven, including five Americans.

About 4,000 people celebrated the bus bombing in Gaza City late Sunday, passing out sweets and praying near Shehadeh's destroyed house, where militants shouting over loudspeakers vowed to "avenge every drop of his blood."

"We advise (Israelis) to prepare more bodybags and wait for the coming operations," a masked Hamas militant said during the rally.

Hours after Sunday's bombing, a shooting attack in Jerusalem's Old City left three people dead, including the assailant.

In the northern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian armed with a rifle and grenades was shot and killed as he emerged from the Mediterranean in a wetsuit and diving equipment near the Jewish settlements of Dugit and Alei Sinai, the army said.

Israeli soldiers also fatally shot two Palestinians, including a fugitive local leader of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, as they emerged from a house in the village of Borqa north of Nablus, relatives said. The men were killed, and four other people arrested, after troops surrounded the house and ordered them out, the relatives said.

President Bush said he was "distressed" to learn of the latest bombing. "There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process," Bush said.

The Israeli government said Arafat, who turned 73 on Sunday, bore ultimate responsibility for not reining in militants during the 22 months of Mideast fighting.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the bombing, but also accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of "war crimes" for the Israeli army's mass detentions, home demolitions and curfews imposed on Palestinians.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44757-2002Aug5.html