Reaching "Critical Mass" In Middle East?
Part 1 -- The Slaughter
by DEBKAfile
22 June 2002
The slaughter of innocents inflicted on Israel this week by Palestinian murderers
is unparalleled since the days of Nazi Germany. No longer are Israelis murdered
singly; whole families are being wiped out while asleep, riding buses, celebrating.
The terror stalking every corner of the country lends the term holocaust a fearful,
intimate meaning for the offspring of those who survived the Nazis and in 1948
founded a Jewish state and a national defense force, vowing that never again
would Jewish children die defenseless.
This week, Israelis began accusing their government of violating this vow.
Of all governments, the administration headed by a fabled hardliner, Ariel Sharon,
stands accused of abandoning the country to its fate. More particularly, it
is the triumvirate he leads with his two Labor partners, defense minister Binyamin
bin Eliezer and the co-author of the Oslo accords which brought Yasser Arafat
back to the country, foreign minister Shimon Peres, that is in the popular dock.
None of the three confess to committing any political or tactical errors even
when, during four days this week, 34 Israelis, 32 of them civilians and many
children, died at the hands of Palestinian killers. Nothing the Sharon government
has done is proving effective for stemming the slaughter; nor will it prevent
the continuation of the killing next week, which is predicted by DEBKAfiles
intelligence sources.
Thursday night, June 20, a Palestinian broke into a house at Itamar, a settlement
south of Nablus, murdered Rahel Shevo and her three children, Neria, 15, Tsvi,
12, Avishai, 5, and the security officer Yosef Tawito, who rushed to their rescue.
Two more children of the Shevo family are fighting for their lives in hospital,
as are two border guards.
Three weeks ago, Palestinian killers targeted the same settlement, shooting
dead three 14-year old youths playing baseball. Their friend, who survived the
attack, was blasted to his death Wednesday, June 19, by a huge charge detonated
in the evening rush hour by another Palestinian terrorist at the French Hill
intersection of north Jerusalem.
That atrocity claimed seven lives, among them 5-year old Gal Eizerman from Maaleh
Adumim (See picture), and her grandmother, Noa Alon, 60, from Ofra, and left
30 injured.
The next day, Avraham Nehmad, 17, from Rishon Lezion, died after four months
in a coma from the wounds he suffered in a Palestinian bombing attack in the
religious quarter of Jerusalem. He never knew he was the eighth victim of the
family to die in that single attack on a Bar Mitzva celebration in Jerusalem.
Tuesday, June 18, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a Jerusalem bus, killing
19 and injuring 52, most from shell-battered Gilo.
Saturday, June 22, 30 injured victims of the weeks carnage remain in hospital,
10 in critical condition.
All the Palestinian terrorist groups are eager to claim responsibility for these
atrocities - from Arafats Fatah and its offshoots, to the Islamic Hamas
and Jihad Islami and the PFLP which assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister,
Rehavam Zeevi, last year.
Israelis find themselves trapped increasingly in a grim routine. Newscasts switched
on everywhere sound more like funeral bulletins with accounts of bloodshed and
the tales of horror pouring out until interrupted by breaking news of the next
calamity.
In French Hill, acquaintances running into each other Friday, June 21, nodded
silently, barely able to speak.
The big French Hill intersection is the location of bus stops and heavy traffic
heading from central and southern Jerusalem to its northern suburbs, the Dead
Sea, West Bank settlements and other points north, as well as a soldiers
hitchhiking post.
Commonly described as the best-guarded junction in the country, it turned out
after the bombing that only four police border guards officers were on duty
without walkie-talkies. They communicated by shouting against the noise of roaring
traffic. The Palestinian district of Beit Hanina is walking distance from the
intersection. French Hill parks have been taken over by Palestinian youths from
surrounding villages who vandalize property, menace local residents and maintain
round-the clock surveillance of their movements.
In other words, four policemen at the French Hill intersection were the flimsy
rampart thrown up against Palestinian terror assaults that are backed up by
an efficient surveillance-intelligence system at one of the capitals key
intersections and a complete neighborhood.
This precarious situation is mirrored up and down Israeli areas abutting West
Bank locations.
The ordinary Israeli asks himself why, after two years of spiraling Palestinian
terror, his government is still incapable of overcoming this chronic menace
to himself and his family, why it is not fending off the Palestinians
homicidal suicide onslaught.