Interesting article from the Guardian...

[sassa]

HUMILIATING SURRENDER FOR PALESTINIAN POLICE

Israeli army in campaign to destroy security forces

By Suzanne Goldenberg

in Ramallah, West Bank

The Guardian - Tuesday April 2, 2002: Cornered and hopelessly outgunned, the Palestinian policemen tore off their uniforms and stripped to their underpants, filing out one by one in the now familiar drill of surrender to the Israeli army.

As the Israeli army swept into three more West Bank towns, a disturbing picture emerged yesterday of a systematic campaign to destroy and dismantle the Palestinian police.

The capture of the 22 policemen at the Darraghmeh apartment buildings in Ramallah offered a prototype for the Israeli army's expanding offensive: raids on residential and commercial buildings, hospitals, private homes and television stations and round-ups of Palestinian men, punctuated by fierce gun battles and, Palestinians say, summary executions.

In many instances, the raids have focused on the Palestinian police, who are entitled to bear arms under the Oslo peace accords, and who are Yasser Arafat's main instrument for the ceasefire Israel and the US are demanding.

The soldiers are also making use of civilians as shields, forcing men to march ahead of them at gunpoint as they shoot their way into suspected hideouts of armed Palestinians.

It is unclear how the 22 Palestinian policemen made their way into the Darraghmeh buildings, past the Israeli tanks prowling the deserted city. But by Sunday night, some two dozen Israeli forces burst in on them in an abandoned third-floor flat, tossing in a grenade which pitted the walls like a rash.

The Israeli soldiers retreated to a stairwell, spraying the door of the flat with gunfire for 20 minutes, neighbours said. They pulled back to a neighbouring building and seized an architecture student, Nader Mansi, 22, setting him the dangerous task of returning to the building to coax the policemen to surrender.

"The officer said he wanted all the Palestinian soldiers to come out of the buildings first, and to take off their boots, their trousers, and their jackets," Mr Mansi said.

The stairwell of the building yesterday provided evidence of the policemen's humiliating surrender, a jumble of boots, khaki trousers, and insignia in the colours of the Palestinian flag.

They were discarded before the policemen emerged from the building, spinning around to show they were unarmed, before they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and bundled into an armoured personnel carrier.

A splash of blood stained the doorway, where one man was shot dead at the start of the raid. "The first one who came down was stupid or inexperienced," said Randa al-Zeer, who watched the drama from her second-floor flat. "He came downstairs with his gun in his hands above his head. So they shot him."

The Israeli army said the dead man was a suspected suicide bomber.

Another policeman, who was shot in the back during the firefight, was left to bleed to death. "I went and checked his pulse. He was barely alive," said Mr Mansi. "I asked the officer to bring an ambulance, and he said: 'They are terrorists, they shoot at us, the policemen'."

The rest of the raid passed without further bloodshed, unlike Saturday when five uniformed policemen were shot dead in a windowless room of a nearby building, apparently at close range.

After the surrender of the policemen, civilian male residents of the flats stripped, marched down stairs, and sur rendered. Then came the women, pulling their shirts up above their waists, residents said.

Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has described the broad military offensive in the West Bank as a war on terror: that is, against the Palestinian suicide bombers who have launched a relentless campaign inside the Jewish state.

But in Ramallah at least, the focus appears to be the main Palestinian police agency: the national security force, whose commander in the West Bank, Haji Ismail, is one of Yasser Arafat's most trusted aides.

Unlike other senior Palestinian officials, who have scattered, Mr Ismail is said to be hunkered down in Mr Arafat's crumbling headquarters, vowing to fight to the last alongside his leader.

Mr Ismail's men are the most professional of the Palestinian police forces - which were trained by the CIA during the 1990s - and their targeting by the Israeli army sits uneasily with Israel's demands that Mr Arafat use the security forces to crack down on the suicide bombers.

Yesterday, such doubts were beginning to emerge inside Israel as well. "Even if we stay on a long time, we will not be able to smash the terror infrastructure," said Danny Yatom, the former chief of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

Four Britons and a Japanese student from Bradford University suffered shrapnel wounds yesterday after Israeli tanks fired warning shots near international "peace volunteers" in the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala. A woman who asked to be known only as Kate suffered a serious stomach wound but was said to be out of danger in hospital.

[igloo]

Sassa..

Interesting article, but please also post articles that also tell the "other" side...cause there is two sides to this brutal conflict....

IMO, both sides are right, and both sides are also wrong...and I'm not sure what the answer is

[sassa]

Originally posted by igloo

Sassa..

Interesting article, but please also post articles that also tell the "other" side...cause there is two sides to this brutal conflict....

IMO, both sides are right, and both sides are also wrong...and I'm not sure what the answer is

Maybe you should also follow this advice regarding your posts?

[igloo]

Originally posted by sassa

Maybe you should also follow this advice regarding your posts?

I never post articles...media (all) objectivity seems to be a lost art..

But if you are going to post articles, provide balance-

[tribal]

Guardian is a good paper/webmag, the only problem i find with it is that its very biased in terms of the mid east conflict. those 'police officers' for example, the ones who surrendered, arent actually the police per se like the NYPD. what the guardian doesnt say is that a vast number of these 'security personnel' aided and participated in attacks on jewish towns and cities, as well as letting key terrorist figures out of jail, and not arresting and trying known murdrerers. initially after the Oslo accords, it was hoped that this security force would be like a Palst police unit, controlling and stabilizing the civilian population. when the intifada broke out, instead of trying to enforce the law and arrest criminals, many of these 'officers' actually helped groups like Hamas and islamic jihad, carry out suicide bombings inside israel. guardian is again, very biased in this case. frankly, it doesnt surprise me how the israelis are acting, considering what arafat has been doing the past few weeks. how many bombings can you take before you start to protect your own citizens.

[sassa]

Originally posted by tribal

Guardian is a good paper/webmag, the only problem i find with it is that its very biased in terms of the mid east conflict. those 'police officers' for example, the ones who surrendered, arent actually the police per se like the NYPD. what the guardian doesnt say is that a vast number of these 'security personnel' aided and participated in attacks on jewish towns and cities, as well as letting key terrorist figures out of jail, and not arresting and trying known murdrerers. initially after the Oslo accords, it was hoped that this security force would be like a Palst police unit, controlling and stabilizing the civilian population. when the intifada broke out, instead of trying to enforce the law and arrest criminals, many of these 'officers' actually helped groups like Hamas and islamic jihad, carry out suicide bombings inside israel. guardian is again, very biased in this case. frankly, it doesnt surprise me how the israelis are acting, considering what arafat has been doing the past few weeks. how many bombings can you take before you start to protect your own citizens.

Where is your information from? Can you prove this?I'm just asking, not trying to be hostile here...

[igloo]

Originally posted by sassa

Where is your information from? Can you prove this?I'm just asking, not trying to be hostile here...

How about just using your brain schmuck

[tribal]

heres some, theres tons of it elsewhere you wont find stuff like this in the Guardian, thats why its good to read both sides. Debka.com is biased as well, just like Guardian, i try to mix both perspectives. but dont kid yourself, the palst police isnt there to police their citizens.

Arafat Races… Bush

DEBKAfile Special Analysis, 5 March, 2002

Tuesday, between 02:15 and 09:00 hours Israel time, Palestinian terrorists slew 5 Israelis and injured 63 in attacks in Tel Aviv, Afula and the Tunnel Road leading out of Jerusalem. Each time the level of bloodshed hits a new and intolerable high – as it did last Saturday and Sunday – it gets worse.

By upping the pace of terror attacks and killing more Israelis, Arafat is throwing a gauntlet at the feet of US president George W. Bush - namely, he will prove he can topple Ariel Sharon before the Americans even get started on overturning Saddam Hussein.

DEBKAfile’s military, intelligence and Palestinian sources report Arafat is determined to turn his confrontation against Israel into Saddam Hussein’s front line against the United States. Certain the Americans will fail, he is standing solidly behind the side he expects to win, Iraq – and challenging the losers, the United States and Israel.

This is a repeat of Arafat’s 1991Gulf War performance. Then too, he advised Saddam to tie his strategy to the Palestinian problem, whereupon the Iraqi ruler defined his 1990 invasion of Kuwait as the first round in the war of liberation for Palestine.

To help Saddam, therefore, two weeks ago, Arafat unleashed two of his private militias, the 30,000-strong Tanzim and the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – who are in close communication with Iraqi military intelligence - for the current terror offensive against Israeli targets, scaling the level of violence up every three days.

In the small hours of Tuesday March 5, a Palestinian armed with an M-16 assault rifle, a long knife, hand grenades and a bomb-belt, climbed onto the MaarivBridge in south Tel Aviv and opened fire on the traffic passing below and two of the many restaurants nearby. When hand grenades began flying, a Tel Aviv police officer, Salim Barakat, 33, from the Druse village of Yarka, Galilee, performed an outstanding act of bravery that stopped the rampage of terror: he gave chase and tackled his quarry at close quarters, upon which the Palestinian slashed his throat. Salim Barakat’s last action before he died was to shoot the terrorist dead.

Arafat’s spokesmen appearing over the media on Tuesday made no bones about their objectives. The Palestinian Authority has declared war on Israel, they say, and aims by means of terrorist strikes to kill as many Israelis as possible and bring down the Sharon government.

Sharon’s handling of the crisis shows hesitancy. With the Arab League summit due to convene on March 28 in Beirut, he is reluctant to play into Arafat’s hands and confront Palesitnian violence with all the strength at Israel’s disposal, lest even moderate Arab rulers, like those of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar, turn their backs on the forthcoming American campaign against Iraq. His hands are also held tight by his dovish Labor coalition partners, the defense and foreign ministers, Binyamin bin Eliezer and Shimon Peres, who oppose permitting the army to tackle the Palestinian offensive head-on. A Labor walkout, by enfeebling the Sharon government, would also weaken the pro-American Middle East front and devalue Israeli military support for a US military offensive. A former general, the Israeli prime minister is also aware of the cost in bloodshed – military and civilian - of a full-scale war campaign against the Palestinians.

Arafat is aware of these constraints, but by piling on the terror day by day, he may push Israel too far. If Sharon is driven into a corner, he will have to take the gloves off or lose his seat.

[sassa]

Originally posted by igloo

How about just using your brain schmuck

Can you for once not insult anyone on these boards?