by Khalid Amayreh
For the third consecutive day, hundreds of Israeli
occupation soldiers and agents of Israel’s chief domestic security agency,
the Shin Bet, are savaging and terrorizing this small Palestinian town of
10,000 inhabitants, located just a few kilometers north of Hebron in the
southern West Bank.
The occupation forces declared the town “a closed military zone” as crack
soldiers moved from house to house, terrorizing civilians, beating
youngsters, and vandalizing public and private property.
According to residents reached by telephone, Israeli soldiers were “carrying
a wave of collective punishments sweeping arrests.”
“First, they ordered all males from 12 to 70 to school yards and streets in
sub-zero temperature, and then heavily armed soldiers moved from house to
house, beating youngsters, verbally abusing women, vandalizing property and
smashing electrical appliances,” said Yousuf Abu Ayyash, an elderly
resident.
Abu Ayyash said Israeli troops were behaving in patters “resembling the
middle-ages”
“Where in the world today a state deploys huge bulldozers in the heart of
urban centers in order to destroy businesses and shops. If they want to
arrest someone, they can arrest him, but why destroy his business? Why
demolish his home?”
So far, as many as sixty residents have been arrested and herded into large
army trucks. Most of the detainees are likely to be sent to the notorious
detention camp, known as Kitziot, in the Negev desert, where thousands of
Palestinians, including professionals, students, doctors, and intellectuals
are incarcerated indefinitely without charge or trial for opposing the
Israeli occupation.
Israel is keeping more than 11,000 Palestinian in jails, apparently as a
bargaining chip to blackmail the Palestinians into giving political and
territorial concessions to the Zionist state.
The detainees rounded up Wednesday night include minors and children such
as Muntaser Fakhri Ikhlayel, 15 and his cousin Adam Hasan Ikhalyel, 16.
According to municipal officials, a number of residents were wounded after
being beaten severely by soldiers, apparently for violating the curfew
imposed on the town. Medial sources named Fakhri Nasr Ikhlayel and his son
as among the people injured.
The elected mayor of the town, Farhan Alkam, has been languishing in jail,
without charge or trial, ostensibly for “holding religious ideas.”
Moreover, significant parts of the water and sewage disposal system were
damaged. In addition, a large number of personal computers, mobile phones
and personal documents were confiscated.
Residents said Israeli soldiers barricaded themselves inside private homes
after confining family members at gunpoint into a small room or a kitchen.
On Wednesday, an army bulldozer demolished a grocery store owned by Sabri
Zamel Abu Mariya in the center of the town. No reason was given for the
demolition.
An Israeli army spokesman refused to comment on the rampage in Beit Ummar,
saying the army doesn’t comment on military operations while still in
progress.
Israel has stepped up systematic persecution of Palestinians lately despite
continuing peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
On Tuesday, the Western-backed Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayadh
complained that Israel was not giving his government any chance to succeed.
He said that provocative Israeli actions, including daily incursions and
raids in Palestinian population centers, were undermining the government’s
stature among ordinary Palestinians.
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