[iwar] I-nfrastructure War

From: televr (yangyun@metacrawler.com)
Date: 2002-04-07 09:01:31
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Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 16:01:31 -0000
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Institutions targeted in Israeli incursions

When the armed clashes eventually end and thousands of troops begin to
withdraw, perhaps as early as this week, the Israeli army will leave
behind a wasteland of debris and bitter feelings, and the wreckage of
a government that might be unable to operate or rebuild itself.

"I don't think we have the capability to issue a permit to build a
house," said Saeb Erekat, a longtime adviser to Yasser Arafat. "I
don't know if we can function. This has set us back 10 years. The army
has dismantled everything we tried to build and ended all of our dreams."

Israel's army had swept through Palestinian cities and villages more
than once in the past year but never before with the intensity
displayed during "Operation Defensive Shield," which began March 29.
It introduced new rules.

Israel labeled Arafat an enemy of the state. In Israel's view, that
made the offices of the Palestinian Authority - from the Finance
Ministry to the Ministry of Education - legitimate targets of war.

Attention has focused largely on Arafat himself, besieged in the
wreckage of his presidential compound in Ramallah.

Israeli troops and Palestinian security forces had a brief but intense
exchange of fire last night at compound. Nabil Aburdeneh, an Arafat
spokesman in the compound, said Israeli troops made moves to enter
Arafat's office, prompting the Palestinian guards in an adjacent
building to open fire. The Israelis shot back at the security guards,
wounding four, one of them seriously, he said. No one in Arafat's
office was hurt, he added.

The Israeli army said it came under fire from the building next to
Arafat's office and returned fire with weapons that included an
anti-tank missile.

But much more has been damaged or destroyed. Troops targeted, for
example, the three-story building housing the Ministry of Education, a
structure that private American donors erected in 1952 as a women's
college.

Naim Abu Homos, deputy minister of education, visited the ministry
Friday, thanks to an escort from a television crew in an armored car.
After his tour, he expressed doubts that West Bank schools will be
able to reopen immediately after the soldiers leave.

"They took all of our new computers and took the hard drives from the
rest," Homos said. "To open doors, it appears that they used
explosives. To see a room where they used a bomb, it looks like a
demolished house."

He said files were taken and copy machines ripped apart. Books from
broken shelves littered the floors. Tanks that came to the entranceway
flattened a courtyard garden planted by elementary school children.

"I hear all the time from children as young as 5, 'Why do the Israelis
hate us so much?'" Homos said in a telephone interview. "I can't
explain it. This is not how you build peace for the future. Children
are talking about killing. I have no idea what is going to come out of
all this."

Israeli officials defend the conduct of their soldiers, saying their
aim was to dismantle a government infrastructure supporting terrorism.
Every government building, they said, was subject to thorough search.

Soldiers seized truckloads of documents that security experts are
studying, searching for links between Arafat's top aides and militant
groups responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis in suicide
bombings and other attacks.

Soldiers also found scores of weapons of types that were prohibited by
the accords that established the Palestinian Authority.

Most of the weapons, however, were found in the security headquarters
and Arafat's presidential compound. The army has not reported any
finds from other government buildings, including the education and
finance ministries.

Hillel Frisch, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University
near Tel Aviv, said the reported frailty of the Palestinian Authority
was greatly exaggerated. It continues to receive millions of dollars a
year in aid from Arab countries and Europe.

Palestinian officials said the Israeli army has unintentionally
strengthened Arafat and, through him, virtually guaranteed that the
Palestinian Authority will survive.

Bickering over corruption and inefficiency, a hallmark of the
Palestinian Authority, has stopped, as has talk of rivalry between
factions. Palestinian legislators say the government will survive even
if it can no longer effectively govern.

"If Arafat emerges fine, then there will be no problem," said Abdul
Jawad Salah, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a
longtime critic of Arafat. "The government will be run as long as he
remains on top. It will not function as it should, but it will function."

Legislators might be able to meet, but much of the population lacks
running water, a sewage system and police. In Ramallah, armored
bulldozers ripped up pavement, piled it into makeshift roadblocks and
buttressed them with cars flattened by tanks.

Water mains broke as the bulldozers and tanks rumbled across them,
depriving more than 180,000 people of running water. Streets have
collapsed, as water eroded the earth underneath them.

Ziad Abu Zayyad, a Palestinian legislator, said the governmental
structure will have to be re-created. "We have the will to rebuild,"
he said. "We need a lot of money to rebuild. But give us a solution
that restores our dignity and our lives, and we will come back."

"What did they accomplish?" Salah, the critic of Arafat, asked of the
Israeli soldiers. "It's a joke. They didn't destroy the infrastructure
of terror. They destroyed our political institutions."

To Israel, they were one and the same.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this artic



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