Israel Attacks Palestinian Refugee Camps
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH
.c The Associated Press
NABLUS, West Bank (Feb. 28) - Backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, Israeli troops launched a major assault on two West Bank refugee camps Thursday, a first in 17 months of fighting. Nine Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in heavy gun battles, and more than 90 Palestinians were wounded, doctors said.
The military said the Balata and Jenin camps were strongholds of Palestinian militants, and that Thursday's operation was intended to show that ''there is no refuge for terror.'' A militia leader said his men would die rather than surrender.
The fighting came just hours after Saudi Arabia presented its new peace initiative in a world forum for the first time. Under the proposal, the Arab world would make peace with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
Also late Wednesday, a Palestinian woman with an explosives belt blew herself up near an Israeli checkpoint. Dareen Abu Aisheh, a 21-year-old English literature student at An Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus, was the second woman to do that since the fighting began in September 2000. Three Israeli policemen as well as two Palestinians who were in a car with Abu Aisheh were hurt in the incident.
Thursday's clashes brought to 1,006 the number of deaths on the Palestinian side in the past 17 months. On the Israeli side, 288 people have been killed.
Israeli troops have repeatedly entered Palestinian towns and villages, but have largely stayed out of the 27 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many of them strongholds of militants.
Tanks cannot enter the narrow alleys of the crowded camps, and the military has not sent in large ground forces, apparently to avoid Israeli casualties. Referring to the gunmen's boasting that Israeli soldiers would not dare enter the camps, the army said in a statement that until Thursday's operation, ''the terror organizations saw these refugee camps as a safe haven from the Israeli security forces.''
Last week, after six Israeli soldiers were killed by gunmen from the Al Aqsa Brigades militia, the army took up positions around Balata, commandeering four apartment buildings overlooking the camp. A leader of the militia, Nasser Awais, and hundreds of his followers are holed up in Balata, home to 20,000 Palestinians.
Early Thursday, dozens of Israeli tanks surrounded the camp, and helicopter gunships flew overhead. Gunmen patrolling the outskirts of Balata alerted each other by mobile phones and began firing at the Israeli forces.
Speaking by phone as the Israeli assault got under way, Awais, the militia leader, said that ''Israeli troops will not enter the camp except over our dead bodies.''
Israeli troops fired heavy machine guns from the tanks and helicopters, and at least two Israeli missiles hit Balata, plunging it into darkness.
Gunman Mohannad Sharaya, 23, said that at one point, he and six militiamen were seeking cover in an alley when Israeli troops from a hilltop post overlooking the camp aimed a laser beam at the group to guide their fire. Militiamen set off dozens of homemade bombs during the fighting.