[Reader-list] Israel executes...

[Bhrigu]

Israel executes Arafat's elite guards

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Ramallah
Sunday March 31, 2002
The Observer 

The ambulancemen were carrying the first body out of the Cairo-Amman bank in 
the centre of Ramallah when I came across them. 

His knees were doubled up in rigor mortis. One of the legs of his green 
parachute jumpsuit had been burned through to the skin by a round fired at 
such close quarters that the muzzle flash had ignited the fabric. A gaping 
wound was visible in his chest - also apparently from a burst of fire from 
close range. What killed him, however, was the gunshot to his temple. 

A few minutes later, the paramedics brought the second body, that of a young 
man, also in Yasser Arafat's elite guard unit, Force 17. 

Someone had taken off his boots, revealing his blue socks. The wounds that he 
had obviously been clutching when he died were also to his upper body. But 
what must have killed him, like his colleague, was a shot fired at close 
range to his temple that had demolished the back of his head. 

The third body was of an older man, in his forties, grey-haired with a 
moustache. Someone had pulled his parachute suit above his head to hide the 
wound. When the stretcher-bearers put him down, the covering was pulled back. 
The wound was to the head. 

What happened on the third floor of the Cairo-Amman bank at midnight on 
Friday during Israel's occupation of the Palestinian city of Ramallah can 
only be surmised. But in the few minutes after Israeli soldiers stormed the 
Palestinian position, five men were wounded and five men were put to death by 
the Israelis, each with a single coup de grace administered to the head or 
throat. 

Maher Shalabi, bureau chief of Abu Dhabi television in Ramallah, was in his 
office in the same building when he heard several bursts of heavy shooting on 
the floors below. 'I heard heavy shooting; maybe it was an exchange of fire. 
But I believe this was an execution.' 

Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian negotiator, added: 'They were executed in 
cold blood. This is a clear example of the collective execution policy 
adopted by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people.' 

According to local residents, the dead men were part of a large group of 
Palestinian policemen who had taken shelter in the building, which also 
houses the offices of the British council, when the Israeli army entered 
Ramallah. 

The men had taken shelter in the foyer area on the third floor next to a 
dentist's surgery. Yesterday bullet holes spattered the walls and the floor 
was flecked with blood. On one wall were large splashes of blood. Elsewhere 
several bloody trails had been marked along the floor where someone had 
pulled the bodies towards the lift. 

An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers entered the building after 
Palestinians opened fire from inside and threw a grenade at the force 
outside. 

The coups des graces administered for these five men are a metaphor for what 
the Israeli incursion is hoping to achieve inside Ramallah. By isolating 
Arafat within his headquarters, Sharon hopes to decapitate the Palestinian 
Authority. 

Yesterday, inside Arafat's compound, it was clear that, for all the claims of 
Ariel Sharon, Arafat was neither under threat nor under arrest. Arafat, 
simply, was surrounded by the Israelis. 

As we approached the compound we could see the tanks and armoured personnel 
carriers ringing his sprawl of offices and barracks. On every side were 
soldiers taking positions and aiming their weapons. 

Approaching closer the Israeli army tried to prevent us following a 
delegation from the Palestinian solidarity movement into the compound, led by 
José Bové, the French farmers leader and anti-globalisation protester. 

In a surreal touch Bové and his colleagues had marched through the ruins of 
the town, even as fighting continued. With hands above their heads, and 
carrying palm fronds as Easter symbols of peace, they approached Arafat's 
compound with two columns of heavily armed Israeli infantry jogging the last 
few hundred metres behind. 

Seeing Bové, who had marched through the town with a small group of fellow 
protesters bearing a tray of medicines for those still injured inside 
Arafat's compound, the soldiers relented and let us enter with him and 
approach the offices where Arafat was holed up. 

Crossing a large car park we could see a three-storey block, its walls 
splattered with tank fire, two windows blackened by fire with sheets hanging 
where the occupants had tried to escape the flames. 

I followed Bové to the entrance to the offices where Arafat was hiding but 
was grabbed from behind by an Israeli soldier and pulled away. Arafat may not 
be a prisoner but it is the Israelis who choose who goes to see the 
Palestinian chairman. 

On every corner yesterday stood Israeli tanks. The devastation that these 
tanks have wrought inside the Palestinians' most attractive city has to be 
seen to be believed. 

Roads have been dynamited or torn up by tanks. Buildings are burned and 
shattered. Everywhere there is rubble, spent ammunition and broken glass. 

A little later, I met Hossam Sharkawi and Mohamed Awad, two senior officials 
in the Palestinian Red Crescent who I had met before. 

Sharkawi, a co-ordinator for emergency services, told me the Israelis had 
arrested five of his drivers. 

'They have them blindfolded and handcuffed. I cannot understand what the 
Israelis are thinking. They also used one of our ambulances today as a human 
shield. They sandwiched it inside a convoy.' 

Sharkawi was able to reveal something of life inside Arafat's compound. 'We 
know there are injured inside,' he said. 'But they have been blocking 
ambulances entering to give treatment.' How many injured he could not say. 

'All that we hear is that there may be between 50 and 100 people trapped with 
Arafat inside the building, without food, or water or any electricity and no 
telephone communication.' He shook his head and walked away.