Guerrilla warfare
Monday, October 20, 2003
The loving dream, acrylics on paper, 70x50 by Silvia Rosenberg
The IAF used attack helicopters this morning to assassinate two mid-ranking activists from the Hamas military wing, the Azzadin el Qassam Brigades – wounding another dozen people when the missiles struck the pickup truck car in the middle of Gaza City. According to Palestinian sources, the chopper’s missiles hit the car when it was stopped at a traffic light at an intersection beside a gas station and a kindergarten, and some of the wounded are children. The strike came two hours after an F-16 struck what the Israel Air Force said was a Gaza munitions warehouse used by the Hamas to make bombs but Palestinians said that the planes hit a building under construction next to the home of a top Hamas leader Abdullah Shami. Shamir was not hurt, but 14 other people were wounded, including seven children and four women. The attacks came as the Palestinian security services were meeting with FBI investigators working on the case of the bombing of an American convoy in Gaza last week.
Meanwhile, the army was investigating the attack last night in Ein Yabrud, where three soldiers were killed in a Palestinian ambush, and a fourth soldier was seriously wounded. The formal language on Israel Radio and other news media, was it was a terrorist attack but the military commentators noted that it was a guerrilla action that from the Palestinian perspective – soldiers inside the territories, in the heart of a Palestinian village within walking distance of Ramallah – the attack was ‘legitimate’ military resistance to the occupation.
The Knesset opened its winter session with a ruckus in the House Committee when National Union MK Uri Ariel called for prosecuting the MKs who participated in the negotiations for the so-called Geneva understandings, which he called the Munich agreement. Later in the day, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will deliver the traditional 'state of the state' address, in which he is expected to attack the Geneva initiative and reiterate that Israel and the U.S. are sticking to the staged 'roadmap' as the peace plan for the Middle East. He might comment on the negotiations with the Hezbollah over a prisoner exchange, which he appears determined to execute, despite rising opposition to the price Israel is being required to pay to the Lebanese organization. A key complaint is that the deal will turn Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, into a pan-Arab leader.
But the main issue bothering Israelis today is the resumption of the strikes in the public sector at the end of the new Year’s-Sukkot holidays, with some ministries closed or semi-closed, as are many agencies like the customs workers making life miserable for arriving passengers at Ben Gurion Airport, the Motor Vehicle Administration refusing to process public requests for licenses, and the Interior Ministry workers not issuing passports, birth certificates, and other documents. The Histadrut is warning that the worse is yet to come if Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his treasury officials, as well as other ministries, don’t engage it in dialogue. Netanyahu is pressing along a long front for the privatization or semi-privatization of various government services ranging from the Public Works Department to the ports, and speaks openly about the need to break what he calls ‘monopolistic unions.’
Ariga Recommends
 Death as a Way of Life David Grossman's collection of essays, starting in 1993, on the arc of the peace process from its optimistic begbeginnings the disaster known as the intifada. Highly recommended reading for anyone wanting to know what life is like in a land caught up in a spiraling madness in which people are taught terror and counter-terror, which have grown so interwoven that it has become impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends, is preferable to generosity of spirit, and compromise resulting from dialogue.
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in Frosties, the anthology of quotations
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