October Monday 02-2000:

How Mohammed, 12, became martyr to the cause…(1)

It is an image that will haunt the world as painfully and powerfully as any of the pictures that emerged when the children of the unborn state of Palestine took on “Israel’s” well-armed troops during the intifada.

An utterly terrified 12-year-old boy huddles on the ground against his father's side, vainly searching for protection as bullets thud into the wall behind him and finally, fatally, into him.

The last moments of the life of Mohammed Jemal al-Durah were caught on television, so none of the spin-merchants or fantasists that thrive on this dispute will be able to say he was brandishing a gun or posed any threat to the “Israeli” soldiers in the well-fortified towers of an army post near where he died.

Another Arab child – Samir Tabangi – died yesterday after being shot in the chest during running battles between “Israelis” and Palestinians in Nablus on the West Bank. He was 10 years old. But it is the sickening death of Mohammed – repeatedly broadcast on Palestinian television throughout “Israeli”-occupied territory yesterday – that will stand out as the most searing and pathetic example of the latest waste of life in a flare-up which was long-simmering, but was triggered last week by the recklessness of Ariel Sharon, the head of the right-wing “Israeli” Likud party.

According to his grieving relatives, Mohammed and his father Jemal, 36, had been returning from Gaza's popular used-car market and were trying to get home to the Buriej refugee camp, the home of many thousands of Palestinians in this rubbish-strewn, fenced in, overcrowded oblong of Mediterranean coastline.

When they arrived at Netzarim junction a battle was underway; the place is one of the worst flashpoints on the Gaza Strip as it is the intersection between a Palestinian-controlled main road and a route controlled by the “Israeli” army that leads to an illegal Jewish settlement. Mr al-Durah, a painter and decorator who works in “Israel”, decided to try to find a path around the trouble-spot on foot.

Within minutes the two were pinned down in the middle of a gun battle, trying to shelter behind a concrete drum. Mr al-Durah – who was badly hurt in the shoulder, arm and legs – later said they were trapped for three-quarters of an hour. During this time, the boy was shot and killed. His father has claimed that ambulances were unable to reach him for half an hour because of the gunfire.

Yesterday efforts to visit the spot failed as another full-scale gun battle was underway. The terms generally used in reporting these events – "clashes" between "Palestinian police" and “Israeli” troops involving "exchanges of fire" – fail to capture the ferocity of it. The usual, deliberately limited, weapons of this dispute – the “Israeli” army's rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas, and the rocks and Molotov cocktails of their young opponents – had been replaced by a more lethal arsenal.

Machine-guns were pounding away. There was a constant clap of explosives, with one detonating every few seconds. Both sides were blasting each other with live ammunition in a full-scale battle. As we ran away along with a crowd of Palestinian on-lookers – after the bullets came too close for comfort – Palestinian security forces were running towards the heart of the battle, automatic weapons at the ready.

The impact of this heavier weaponry was on grisly display at Gaza's main hospital, al-Shifa. Officials said by early evening, they had taken in 30 casualties, of whom one – a man in his early twenties – had died.

According to Mauawiya Hasannein, director of the casualty unit, he was killed by an explosive bullet. Mr Hasannein said three others were critically hurt – one with shrapnel wounds, and one who had been shot through the head by a "rubber bullet". There is an “Israeli” military post diagonally across the road from the place where Mohammed was killed. The “Israeli” army say he was caught in "crossfire" and that it doesn't know who fired the fatal bullets; the Gazans point out that bullets were striking the wall behind him, which appear to have been coming from the “Israeli” army position.

What is clear, though, is that the boy has become a martyr in Palestinian eyes, who will be remembered in a way the others who have been killed in the last few days – all Arabs, apart from a couple of “Israeli” soldiers – will not. This was confirmed by the big crowds who turned out in Gaza to carry his broken body through the streets at his funeral on Saturday night.

"His blood is sacrificed for the home country and for Palestine," his mother Amel, 34, said yesterday. Speaking from hospital his father was more explicit. Mohammed – one of six children – had died for "the sake of the al-Aqsa mosque", the holy site in Jerusalem seen by the Palestinians as both sacred and sovereign territory, and which they feel was deeply violated by Mr Sharon's visit.

One other thing is clear: this will do “Israel” no good at all. For now the horrors of past Palestinian attacks in “Israel” are forgotten; it stands accused of igniting a fight over holy sites in which small children are getting killed. Even Ehud Barak's expensive image-makers will find it hard to put that right.

Where 'caught in the crossfire' can leave no room for doubt…(2)

By Robert Fisk

When I read the word "crossfire", I reach for my pen. In the Middle East, it almost always means that the “Israelis” have killed an innocent person. When the “Israelis” fired shells into the United Nations compound at Qana in southern Lebanon in 1996, Time magazine printed a photograph of a dead baby with a caption saying it had been killed in "crossfire". This was untrue. The baby had been killed in the “Israeli” bombardment along with 105 other civilians – which started after Hizbollah guerrillas opened fire on an “Israeli” army unit that was laying booby-trap mines inside the UN zone.

So when 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durah was killed in Gaza on Saturday and I read on the Associated Press wire that the child was "caught in the crossfire", I knew at once who had killed him. Sure enough, reporters investigating the killing said the boy was shot by “Israeli” troops. So was his father – who survived – and so was the ambulance driver who was killed trying to rescue the boy. Yet BBC World Service Television was still saying yesterday morning that Mohammed al-Durah was "caught in the crossfire of a battle that has left hundreds wounded and killed many others". I knew what this meant.

True, the “Israeli” soldiers who killed the boy may not have known whom they hit. They were apparently firing through a wall. But why the reluctance on the part of journalists to tell the truth? Why was it that in its report from Jerusalem on Saturday, the AP only mentioned – in paragraph 17, for heaven's sake – that “Israeli” troops, on the word of their own officer, fired anti-tank missiles during the confrontation? What was the “Israeli” army doing using missiles against rioters?

By yesterday afternoon, the story had been transformed into a "blame" conflict. The “Israelis” blamed the Palestinian authority for organising riots. BBC World Service radio ran a tape of an “Israeli” official stating that rioters were "shooting [sic] Molotov cocktails and stones" which "kill people". A listener might have been forgiven for thinking that 22 “Israelis” had been killed – rather than 22 Palestinians – in the previous 72 hours. The BBC then ran a tape of Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian spokesman, saying that the “Israelis”, not the Palestinians, had been shooting.

Truth is a hard bullet to bite. Palestinian policemen had also opened fire on the “Israelis”. Ironically, the Arab press in Beirut had no hesitation in saying this. The press in Lebanon showed photographs of Palestinian policemen firing Kalashnikov rifles at “Israeli” troops. But, given the fact that they did not kill “Israelis” – one of them was hit while firing – was it not worth mentioning that the Palestinians were the victims, not the “Israelis”?

When BBC Television got round to mentioning Ariel Sharon's flagrantly provocative visit to the Haram as-Sharif/ Temple Mount on Thursday, they yesterday called him an "“Israeli” leader" when – for Palestinians – he was the man who bore indirect responsibility (according to “Israel’s” own inquiry) for the massacre of up to 2,000 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut 18 years ago. The BBC correspondent, Paul Adams, was one of the very few who bravely drew attention to Sharon's appalling record, pointing out Sharon had "an extraordinary capacity to leave... destruction in his wake."

And so, by last night, the story had changed. No longer did “Israeli” soldiers and policemen kill at least 22 Palestinians in three days; now the question was whether the Palestinian Authority organised the riots that "led" [sic] to their deaths. The “Israeli” soldiers, who disobeyed every human rights commitment by firing on rioters with live rounds, were respectfully called the "“Israeli” security forces", disregarding the fact that "security" was the one thing “Israeli” soldiers were clearly unable to provide.

On CNN and the BBC and other satellite chains, reporters were asked if the killings would upset the "peace process", with no willingness to explain that it was the collapse of the peace process which lay at the heart of the riots. The Muslim holy areas of Jerusalem were "disputed" – although UN Security Council resolution 242, upon which the "peace process" is supposedly based, demands the withdrawal of “Israeli” forces from territories captured during the 1967 war, including east Jerusalem.

What lies behind this – apart from the sheep-like inability of many journalists to call a spade a spade – was the continuing belief that Palestinians are, by nature, violent and riotous.

The United States called for an end to the "violence" – this courtesy of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – without making any reference to Sharon's grotesque visit to the mosque grounds of east Jerusalem. By yesterday afternoon, the BBC were at it again, reporting that "“Israeli” authorities were bracing themselves for what may lie ahead". Weren't the Palestinians also doing that?

1-     Independent, 2-10-2000.

2-     Same source.

October Wednesday 04-2000:

Palestinian refugee children in Lebanon shocked at boy's televised killing…(1)

“ Palestinian refugee children, stunned at the televised weekend killing in the Gaza Strip of a 12-year-old boy, joined demonstrations Tuesday against the massacres in the Palestinian territories.

Young Palestinian Mohamed al-Durra was killed, and his father gravely wounded, when they came under “Israeli” fire on Saturday.

The incident was captured on film by a French television crew, and photos were published in newspapers across the world on Sunday, evoking unamimous reactions of shock and horror.

"Seeing a child of my age being murdered on television was a horrible, horrible sight, and I have been in shock since then," said Ibrahim Taha.

Ihab al-Sadid, also 12, said: "it was the first time that I follow political news on television, and I had to see a child being murdered."

Taha and Sadid were among hundreds of youngsters taking part in demonstrations at the Rashidiyeh Palestinian refugee camp near Tyre and further north in Ain el-Helweh, the largest shantytown in south Lebanon.

The “Israeli” army admitted that it could have fired the shot that killed the boy during the wave of violence sparked by Thursday's visit of “Israeli” right-wing leader Ariel Sharon to east Quds's mosque compound.

Sadid, with a face blackened by smoke from the tires he had been burning at the entrance of the camp during the protest, said "they are killing our children because they are afraid that they will grow up and fight them.

"They did it on purpose; I saw them. They kept firing until Mohamed died. Our schools have been on strike for three days, and we will continue our protests until the world hears our voice," said Khaled Hamdi, 12.

Rida Saleh, a 13-year-old wearing military fatigues, was pleading with photographers on site to take him with them "to Palestine because I also want to die as a martyr, and I only want to die there.

"They killed him because he was small. They are mighty and they only dare young children, but when we grow up we will avenge Mohamed," said Saleh.

Nine-year-old Khaled Hamad wiped at the black smudge on his face and defiantly waved a Palestinian flag before shouting angrily: "If I could shoot the “Israelis”, I would not hesitate."

Mohammed Agha, 11, said "I wish Mohamed had a weapon to defend himself," before turning to chant with other children: "the blood of the martyrs in Quds is calling you."

At the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tyre, about 300 Palestinian refugee boys and girls aged between five and seven held a sit-in.

"All of us are the brothers and the sisters of the martyr Mohamed al-Durra," said a banner. "“Israel”, the assassin is killing Palestinian children," read another.

The children, from the three Palestinian refugee camps in the Tyre region, held placards reading: "Palestine is a responsibility for all of us" and "yes to resistance and yes to rifles -- the only way to liberate the land."

"I want to kill the Isarelis like they killed my Palestinian brother Mohamed," said Mohammed Natour, 14.

"I am shocked and I have been extremely sad since seing Mohamed's savage murder while the entire world was watching him on television without being able to help," he said.

At the entrance of the Ain el-Helweh camp, youths torched “Israeli” and US flags and burned effigies of “Israeli” Prime Minister Ehud Barak and right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon.

Many women wept silently as they carried black and white pictures of the young Durra.

And in Beirut, around 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese took to the streets to protest against the “Israeli” massacres.

1-     AFP, 3-10-2000.

October Friday 13-2000:

Lies, hatred and the language of force…(1)

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent

13 October 2000

This is a story about lies, bias, hatred and death. It's about our inability – after more than half a century – to understand the injustice of the Middle East. It's about a part of the world where it seems quite natural, after repeatedly watching on television the funeral of 11-year-old Sami Abu Jezar – who died two days after being shot through the forehead by “Israeli” soldiers – for a crowd to kick two “Israeli” plainclothes agents to death. It's about a nation that claims "purity of arms" but fires missiles at civilian apartment blocks and then claims it is "restoring order". It's about people who are so enraged by the killing of almost a hundred Palestinians that they try to blow up an entire American warship.

It's as simple as that. When I walked into the local photocopy shop yesterday afternoon, the boys there greeted me with ecstatic smiles. "Did you hear that an American ship has been attacked?" one of them asked. "There are Americans dead." All I saw around the room were smiles. In a corner, on a small television screen, an “Israeli” Apache aircraft was firing a missile at Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Gaza.

Seven years ago, CNN showed us the “Israeli” prime minister shaking Yasser Arafat by the hand, live on the White House lawn. Now, live from Gaza, we watch a pilot carrying out an order from the “Israeli” prime minister to kill Arafat by bombing his headquarters.

As usual last night, the television news broadcasts – those most obsequious and deforming of information dispensers – were diverting our minds from the truth. They did not ask why the Palestinians should have lynched two “Israeli” undercover men. Instead, they asked why Palestinian police had not protected them. They did not ask why a suicide bomber in a rubber boat should have bombed the USS Cole.

Instead, they asked who he was, who he worked for, and they interviewed Pentagon officials who denounced "terrorism". Always the "who" or the "what"; never the "why".

It is of course possible that Osama bin Laden, one of the more recent American hate figures, could have inspired – by sermons rather than direct instruction – the attack on the USS Cole. Bin Laden's family originally came from Yemen. And it was Yemen that demanded the right earlier this week to fly arms direct to the Palestinians of the occupied territories – provoked, it seems, by slow-motion footage of yet another boy, a 12-year-old, dying on top of his father in Gaza after being shot by the “Israelis”. Yet many of the attacks on “Israeli” occupation forces in Lebanon were carried out by young men, unconnected with the corrupt Arab political élite but enraged by the injustice of their lot. Maybe it was the same in Yemen.

When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo agreement seven years ago, only a very few asked how soon this raddled, flawed, hopeless "peace" would collapse. I thought it would end in violence because the Palestinians were being forced by Americans and “Israelis” to sign a peace that would give them neither a state nor an end to Jewish settlements on Arab land, nor a capital in Arab east Al-Quds.

I wrote that Arafat had been turned from "super-terrorist" into a "super-statesman" but could easily be turned into a "super-terrorist" again. And so it came to pass. Yesterday, the “Israeli” spokesman Avi Pasner shared a BBC interview with me – and called Arafat a "terrorist".

Alas, none of it was surprising – none save our continued inability to grasp what happens when a whole society is pressure-cooked to the point of explosion. A Pentagon official was saying last night the US government was trying to find out if the attack on the USS Cole was "related" to "violence" in the Middle East. Come again? Related? Violence? Who can doubt that the attempt to sink the Cole and all her 360 American crew was directed at a nation now held responsible for “Israel’s” killing of scores of Palestinian civilians? The United States – despite all the claptrap from Madeleine Albright about "honest brokers" – is “Israel’s” ally.

Ever since Arafat tried to leave the US ambassador's residence in Paris two weeks ago, the Palestinians have placed this responsibility on America's shoulders. If the US wants to go on supporting an ally that shoots down Palestinians in the streets of the occupied territories, then the United States will be held to account. And will pay for it.

No, of course this does not excuse the bloodthirsty killing of armed “Israeli” agents or the desecration of the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus, or, indeed, the murder of Jewish settlers. But the cruelty of the Palestinians can be explained by the cruelty of the “Israelis”. The death toll among Palestinians now is almost exactly equal to that at Qana in 1996 when “Israeli” gunners butchered 106 Lebanese civilians. We called it a massacre. The “Israelis” said it was a mistake. True, it's scarcely 5 per cent of the death toll at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, when “Israel’s” militia allies killed up to 2,000 Palestinian civilians. We called that a massacre. “Israel” said this, too, was a mistake. Like they called the death of two 12-year-old children and a seven-year-old child and Sami Abu Jezar a mistake.

And yesterday – with no institutional memory to guide them – journalists were taking at face value “Israel’s” extraordinary claim that they fired "only at military targets", that the civilian population of Gaza had been "told to evacuate" the areas to be bombed. Do I not seem to remember how the “Israelis” said in 1982 that in Lebanon they "only fired at military targets" – and left more than 17,000 civilians dead in two months? Do I not recall that the “Israelis” ordered the villagers of Mansouri to "evacuate" before they shelled it in 1996, then attacked their cars on the road and fired a missile into the back of an ambulance, killing four children and three women – the missile made, of course, by the Boeing company of America?

And was not the CIA supposed to be training the Palestinian policemen now being derided by Mr Pasner as "terrorists" (his own country having personally vetted which of them should carry arms)? And was not the United States the guarantor and broker of the disastrous Oslo agreement? So is it really surprising that the Palestinians – indeed, the Arabs – blame the United States for the tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land?

And is it any less surprising that the “Israelis” have now turned on the man with whom they thought they would conclude a peace that would turn "Palestine" into a Bantustan? The man who was supposed to "control" the Palestinians, who was supposed to lock up opponents of the "peace process" – whether they be peaceful or violent – is not doing what he was told. He walked out of Camp David because it was a surrender too far. So President Clinton blamed him for the conference's failure – on “Israeli” television, of all places – and ordered Arafat not to declare a state. Or else.

And now, when two US presidential contenders – Messrs Bush and Gore – try to out-do each other in their love and loyalty for “Israel”, can America comprehend what is happening?

I suppose it's the same old story. The “Israelis” only want peace. The unruly, riotous, murderous Palestinians – totally to blame for 95 of their own deaths – understand only violence.

That's what “Israel’s” military spokesman said last night. Force, he said, "will be the only language they understand". Which is about as near to a declaration of war as you can get.

Middle East on the edge of war

1-  Independent, 13-10-2000.