July 24, 2002
The Writing On The Wall Series #8: Israel's Nukes in the Spotlight
Hello everyone
The following articles about Israel's nuclear arsenal make for a very sobering read - especially when considering the blatant disregard for human lives by the Sharon government as exemplified once again by its mass slaughter of innocent civilians yesterday, a war crime vigorously denounced by most of the world - but not so vigorously by the U.S. which has likewise indiscriminately killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and made almost no excuse for it,
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
"As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral."
- Omar Bradley, a U.S. five-star general, Known as the "GI's general" and field commander of 1.3 million men during the Second World War.
CONTENTS
1. Sharon answers cease-fire offer with carnage
2, Sharon Threatens Global Nuclear War
3. Israel Achieves ICBM Nuclear Capability
4. US Air Force Says Israel Has 400 Atomic And Hydrogen Bombs
5. We Really Do Have A Lot To Thank Ariel Sharon For
6. Cameraman Records the Slaughter of Bicycling Children
7. Targeting Medical Care; Israel's Recent Incursion into the West Bank Renews Attacks on Ambulances
See also:
A Hamas Chieftain, and Many Civilians Die When Israelis Attack His Home (July 23)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/07.24B.hamas.chief.htm
Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program
http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Israel/
History Of Nuclear Weapons - Israel
http://www.rense.com/general26/historw.htm
Renegade Rattles Israeli Nuke Program
http://www.rense.com/general26/rattles.htm
In Europe U.S. Plan To Invade Iraq Raises Alarms (July 23)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/07.24A.us.pln.iraq.htm
Anti-nuclear activists in sea protest (July 22)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_2142000/2142390.stm
Two environmental activists jump into the sea in front of armed cargo vessels carrying nuclear waste to Britain from Japan. (...) Greenpeace claims the ships are carrying enough plutonium waste to make 50 nuclear bombs, which make them a potential target for terrorists. --- Along their entire route the ships will face opposition by ordinary citizens in small boats and governments terrified at the prospect of an accident or deliberate attack. The deadly freighters, Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, are facing opposition by a citizen's flotilla of small ships in the Tasman Sea. You can get your own virtual ship and join the Greenpeace virtual flotilla by participating in this cyberaction to send a letter to the Japanese foreign minister by going at http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=vf1&s=vf
1.
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002
From: LESLEY WHITING <lesleywhiting@yahoo.com>
Subject: Sharon answers Hamas cease-fire offer with carnage
Dear Jean,
Would you kindly include this brief commentary from the Israeli Peace Bloc on todays airstrike in Gaza, following Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's unprecedented offer to cease all suicide attacks in exchange for Israeli withdrawal? (It includes both an Israeli and a Palestinian comment). Sharons response needs no further commentary. He has written his intentions in blood across the sky for all to see.
Blessings,
Lesley
---
GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Press release, Tuesday July 23
Sharon answers cease-fire offer with carnage
Rabin-Pelosof resigns from the government
Less than twenty-four hours ago, the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahamad Yassin made an unprecedented public call for a cease-fire with Israel. That call was the culmination of long, patient negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas leadership, aimed at achieving a ceasefire between the Palestinians and Israel, putting an end to suicide bombings and paving the way to a resumption of some kind of political process Saudi Arabia, too, is known to have made direct approaches to the Hamas leaders in order to achieve the same result. A government of Israel caring even a little bit for the well-being of its own citizens would have welcomed the opening. Not so the Sharon Government, whose response was to send an F-16 fighter plane on a bombing spree in Gaza. The effect of attempting to assassinate a senior Hamas leader was a carnage whose victims included many women and children. Now, instead of offers of ceasefire the Hamas leadership is coming out with calls for revenge, which seems to suit Sharon much better. It is the PM, with his endless string of provocations, who bears the responsibility for this missed opportunity of ending the cycle of bloodshed.
Deputy Defence Minister Dalia Rabin-Pelosof resigned this evening, charging the Sharon government with destroying the life work of the late Yitzchak Rabin, her father.
For more information: Adam Keller, Gush Shalom spokesperson +972-3-5565804 / +972-56-709603 / +972-56-709604
[We just received the following from George Rishmawi who lives under curfew in Beit Sahour]
--- Forwarded message follows ---
From: "abunimir" <abunimir@yahoo.com>
Date sent: Mon, 22 Jul 2002
Subject: Israeli terrorist airstrike kills 12 in Gaza
[Gaza, on Tuesday July 23, 2002]
Israeli F-16 fighters attacked a residential area to the east of the Al Yarmouk area in Gaza a couple of hours ago killing 12 Palestinian civilians and injuring more than 130, children, women, and old people among them. Israeli newspaper Haaretz says that Sheikh Salah Shehadeh (one of Hamas leaders) has been killed in the attack. Al Jazeera TV said that Shehadeh's wife and three of his children have also been killed in the same attack among the 12 dead.
This terrorist attack comes hours after Hamas's leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's declaration about the intention of Hamas to stop its military attacks in Israel if Israel withdraws from the Palestinian areas. (Some Palestinian sources say that Sheikh Salah Shehadeh is still alive.)
Israeli and Palestinian officials met and there was a talk about withdrawing from two re-occupied cities if things will be quiet in the coming 24 hours or so. Now Israel assasinates a Hamas leader and Hamas is threatening to revenge. Thus, there will be no 24 hours of no attacks. This means that there will be no withdrawal from the cities.
I think the message is clear by now. Israel wants to keep provoking the Palestinians so they keep their occupation alive in the midst of an American blessing for every Israeli crime against the Palestinians under the excuse of fighting terrorism.
If what Palestinians are doing is terrorism, then Israel has to be blamed for creating it. The occupation is the maker of its and our suffering, therefore Occupation has to stop so that both peoples can live in peace.
---
Full transcript of the war crimes panel available on the Gush site
For Hebrew http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/forum.html
For English http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/forum_eng.html
***
Palestinian life under occupation, reports and letters at: http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
Why are the volunteer international observers important? Because the United Nations didn't send its protection force. Information about the International Solidarity Movement - and how to support it in different ways - at http://www.palsolidarity.org/
If you want to support Gush Shalom's activities you can send a cheque or cash, wrapped well in an extra piece of paper, to:
Gush Shalom pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
or ask us for charities in your country which receive donations on behalf of Gush Shalom
(Please, add your email address where to send our confirmation of receipt. More official receipts at request only.)
For more about Gush Shalom you are invited to visit our renewed website: http://www.gush-shalom.org/
2.
From: http://www.rense.com/general26/sharonthreat.htm
Sharon Threatens Global Nuclear War
Exclusive to Rense.com
By Jeffrey Steinberg Executive Intelligence Review
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw
6-28-2
If there is one nation on this planet that deserves to be described and dealt with as a rogue state, armed with weapons of mass destruction and intent on using them, it is Israel, under the terror reign of war criminal Ariel Sharon.
If this was a matter of assertion or conjecture in the past, statements coming out of top Israeli officials in the past days have eliminated any cause for hesitation.
On June 26, the Israeli newspaper of record, Ha'aretz, cited two top Israeli space scientists, who declared that Israel now has the capacity to fire missiles at targets anywhere on earth. Prof. Moshe Gelman, head of the Asher Institute at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, boasted to Ha'aretz that "From the moment the State of Israel has the capability to launch a satellite into orbit around the earth at a height of hundreds of kilometers, it established [its] capability to launch, by means of a missile, a payload to any location on the face of the earth."
Dr. Gelman's words were seconded by Avi Har-Even, the director-general of the Israeli Space Agency (ISA), which recently launched the Ofek 5 satellite, who told Ha'aretz's Amnon Barzilai that the Ofek 5 launch had two strategic objectives: providing Israel with an independent spy satellite capability to monitor military activities in targeted countries throughout the entire Near East. "The second involves Israel's launch capabilities."
Democratic Party Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche reacted strongly to the Israeli announcement about an ICBM capability. He characterized it as a direct threat by Ariel Sharon against any nation that attempts to interfere with Israel's mad drive for its "Greater Israel" permanent annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and the mass expulsion of the 3.5 million Palestinians living in those territories.
"Israel is threatening global thermonuclear war," LaRouche warned, and this is unacceptable. He called upon the international community to immediately make the entire Mideast a "denuclearized zone," by forcing Israel to dismantle its nuclear weapons arsenal. LaRouche characterized the announcement of the Israeli ICBM capability as a "phase-change" in a global strategic situation, already driven to the brink of war by the onrushing financial collapse and the June 25 speech by President George W. Bush, which gave Sharon a defacto American "green light" to take any action against the Palestinians which he deems necessary.
NATO Officially Warned
The Israeli intent to use nuclear weapons was a topic of, at minimum, implicit discussion, at a June 26 Brussels behind-closed-doors meeting of NATO's North Atlantic Council, which was addressed by the current head of the Israeli Mossad, Ephraim Halevy. According to the June 27 Ha'aretz, Halevy reported to the NATO officials that Mossad is convinced that Iran is developing intermediate and long range missiles, and "weapons-grade nuclear capabilities," as well as VX gas and biological weapons. As Ha'aretz's Amir Oren reported, Halevy asserted that "Israel cannot spare any effort to foil, prevent or delay the attainment of weapons of mass destruction by countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya."
Pushing A New Regional War
According to Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld, who wrote that "Sharon's Plan Is to Drive Palestinians Across the Jordan," the intent of the present Israeli government is to seize upon either a U.S. military attack on Iraq, aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein, or a serious terrorist incident inside Israel to launch a "mass transfer" of more than two million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, across the river into Jordan.
"Should such circumstances arise," Van Creveld wrote in the April 28, 2002 issue of Conrad Black's Sunday Telegraph, "then Israel would mobilise with lightening speed--even now, much of its male population is on standby."
He spelled out a precise order of battle for the "mass transfer," although he wrote of his own personal opposition to the Sharon scheme:
"First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government."
He continued, "A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armoured, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas.
"The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in comparison."
Van Creveld estimated that none of the Arab states would respond militarily to the Israeli move, adding, "Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so `awesome and terrible' (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister once said) as to defy the imagination." There is no question that this was a direct reference to an Israeli use of nuclear weapons against Iraq.
He added, "Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days."
Van Creveld concluded that only the United States could stop such an Israeli doomsday scenario from playing out, and right now, chances are slim to nil that America will step in to stop Israel, which is seen by Bush as a major ally in the "war on terrorism." After Bush's June 25 speech, copies of Van Creveld's article were taken from the files and studied, intensively, by many Arab military and intelligence commanders, according to a well-informed Egyptian source.
Deadly Arsenal
The scale of the Israeli nuclear weapons program is vast, and has now been qualitatively transformed, by Israel's acquisition of three German-made diesel powered submarines, which, according to a recent study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, are armed with nuclear warheads on Cruise missiles. Carnegie published a report early in June 2002, detailing the Israeli nuclear weapons program. That booklength report on global nuclear weapons proliferation, Deadly Arsenals--Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction, included an entire chapter on Israel's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program.
The authors wrote, "Probably the most important nuclear-related development in Israel is the formation of its sea-based nuclear arm. By July 2000 Israel completed taking delivery of all three of the Dolphin-class submarines it had ordered at the Thyssen-Nordseewerke shipyard in Kiel, Germany. In doing so, it is widely believed, Israel moved significantly toward acquiring a survivable second-strike nuclear capability. All indications are that Israel is on the way to finalizing a restructuring of its nuclear forces into a triad, like the United States.
"Since the early 1980s (and probably even earlier) the Israeli navy (jointly with other governmental agencies) lobbied hard for the notion that Israel should build a small fleet of modern diesel submarines for `strategic purposes,' an Israeli euphemism for a sea-launched nuclear capability... It is also believed (but not confirmed) that the most sensitive aspect of the project, the cruise-missile technology that renders the diesel submarines nuclear-capable launching platforms, was developed and built in Israel... According to one report in the London Sunday Times, by early 2000 Israel had carried out the first launching tests of its cruise missiles."
The Carnegie study concluded, "A fleet of three submarines is believed to be the minimum that Israel needs to have a deployment at sea of one nuclear-armed submarine at all times."
The fact that Israel has achieved a deployable nuclear triad was advertised in a June 15 report in the Washington Post, under the headline, "Israel Has Submarine-Based Atomic Arms Capability."
(The preceding will appear on July 1, in Electronic Intelligence Weekly, the online of EIR. For more information, call, toll-free, 1-888-347-3258)
3.
From: http://www.rense.com/general26/iscap.htm
Originally from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28169
Israel Achieves ICBM Nuclear Capability
Satellite Launch Shows Capacity To Send Payload To Any Location On Earth Geostrategy-Direct Intelligence Brief
©2002 WorldNetDaily.com 7-7-2
Israel has achieved the ability to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Israeli officials and experts said the nation's ICBM capability was demonstrated by its launch in May of the Ofeq-5 satellite into space orbit. The satellite was carried by a Shavit-class booster. The Shavit booster was launched westward against the earth's orbit, officials said. The direction was decided to prevent the Ofeq from falling into enemy hands if it failed in an eastward launch.
"The minute Israel can launch a satellite into orbit around the earth to an altitude of hundreds of kilometers, it established the capability to launch, by means of a missile, a payload to any location on earth," Moshe Gelman, a leading Israeli space expert at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, said on Wednesday. "We are talking about the laws of physics."
Gelman said the path of a satellite booster is the same as that of a ballistic missile. The difference is the target - with a booster requiring greater energy to ensure that it does not fall to earth with the satellite.
In 1998, Israel failed to place its Ofeq-4 satellite into orbit. The failure was attributed to the Shavit launcher.
Officials said the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries, which builds the Shavit, introduced changes in the booster for the latest launch. They said the changes were said to have focused on the rocket engines meant for the first two stages of the Shavit. The engines are produced by the state-owned Israel Military Industries. Israel's ICBM capabilities were first said to have been demonstrated in 1988 when the Ofeq-1 was shot into orbit. Ofeq-1 had a payload of about 180 kilograms (400 pounds). The Ofek 5 weighs about 300 kilograms (660 pounds).
The Shavit is said to be a derivative of the Jericho surface-to-surface missile. The Jericho is believed to have been last tested in the Mediterranean two years ago.
U.S. officials have determined that the Shavit has a range of 7,200 kilometers (4,464 miles), the Israeli Ha'aretz daily said. The newspaper quoted Professor Steve Fetter, a physicist at the University of Maryland, that the Shavit could deliver a 775 kilogram warhead a distance of 4,000 kilometers (2,480 miles).
Israel's Jericho missile silo is said to be located outside Bet Shemesh, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) southwest of Jerusalem. The London-based Foreign Report asserted that a six-man Palestinian insurgency cell captured on Monday had attempted to blow up the missile facility.
4.
From: http://www.rense.com/general26/bombs.htm
Originally from http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_9.html
US Air Force Says Israel Has 400 Atomic And Hydrogen Bombs
WorldTribune.com 7-4-2
A United States Air Force report asserts that Israel is building a nuclear naval force meant to respond to any nuclear strike by such countries as Iran or Iraq.
It is the first time a U.S. military institution has stated that Israel has produced a hydrogen bomb. The number of purported Israeli nuclear weapons cited in the report is double that of previous assessments.
The report, sponsored by the air force's Counterproliferation Center, asserts that the navy can deploy any of what it asserts is Israel's 400 atomic and hydrogen weapons, Middle East Newsline reported. The center is located in the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
In a report entitled "The Third Temple's Holy of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons," U.S. Army Col. Warner Farr said Israel's nuclear arsenal has grown from an estimated 13 nuclear bombs in 1967 to 400 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Farr said Israel's navy could deploy nuclear weapons on the fleet of three German-built Dolphin-class diesel submarines.
"Israel will then have a second strike capability with nuclear cruise missiles, and this capability could well change the nuclear arms race in the Middle East," the report, which Farr said is based on unclassified sources, read. "Israeli rhetoric on the new submarines labels them 'national deterrent' assets."
The report said these nuclear missiles could have a range of 350 kilometers. Israel would try to base its nuclear naval force near Oman, with which Israel has informal relations, the September 1999 report, which was recently published by the center, said.
"The first basing options for the new second-strike force of nuclear missile capable submarines include Oman, an Arab nation with unofficial Israeli relations, located strategically near Iran," the report said.
The U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center was established in 1998. The center is meant to help prepare air force commanders counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. The report did not deem Israel's purported nuclear arsenal as a direct threat to the United States.
The report said Israel's Defense Ministry has requested from the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorization for a retaliatory nuclear strike. Israel could also use Jordanian air space for a nuclear strike on Iran, which the report said could produce a nuclear warhead as early as 2004.
Comment
Josh Greenberg 7-4-2
I've been telling my American friends for years not to mess with Israel. We are the world's 4th or 5th strongest nuclear power...nice to finally see it in print. That's why today Bush is powerless to influence the policies of the Sharon government. The US continues to give us many billions a year! ... most of which has gone into building our nuclear weapons, fund our West Bank settlements, and pay for our spies and intelligence services! You don't like Israeli policy? Tough sh*t! You funded it all and we did the rest! 400 nuclear warheads...minimum. Remember that. Now, just imagine what our biological weapons scientists have cooked up and have sitting on the shelf, ready to go. Get this: NO ONE is EVER going to force Israel to do anything against its will. Try it, world, and find out what happens.
5.
From: http://www.rense.com/general26/thanks.htm
We Really Do Have A Lot To Thank Ariel Sharon For
Name Witheld 7-6-2
Jeff - We really do have a LOT to thank Ariel Sharon for, when you think about it.
I am thinking of writing a personal thank-you letter to Ariel, I would thank him for helping us average Americans understand where billions of our hard-earned tax dollars have been going to support his genocidal war machine: now we can make specific demands on our elected representatives to cut off this obscene subsidy.
I would thank him for showing us once and for all what Zionist Israel is all about, and revealing his demented plan for a 'Greater Israel' ... so that we can protest the use of our fighting men and women to promote Israel's agenda for world domination through its own brand of terrorism and nuclear blackmail.
I would thank him for playing out the absolute bankruptcy of his brand of Judaism, and creating a situation in which one can better understand what Hitler was warning about.
I would thank him for creating a situation in which "The Holocaust Industry" can now be openly analyzed and discussed for what it has been - the emotional blackmail of America and Europe to extract funds to support Zionist Israel's dark and devious agenda for lo these many decades.
I would thank him for providing what may well be the definitive wake-up call to Americans to take back our country from the hands of the Mossad, Zionist extremists, and the Christian far right.
I would thank him for setting the stage in which America's first "court-appointed President" may well be forced from office for selling out our country to promote hidden economic agendas and insider profiteering from our national "partnership" with Israel.
I would thank him for rekindling "anti-Semitism" worldwide, so that we can all understand what it means to be against the brand of ruthless, materialistic, self-serving, power-greedy, deceptive, atheistic and criminal mind-set which has come to characterize Zionism and militant 'Jewish' nationalism.
I would thank him for behaving in such reprehensible ways that loving and decent Jews of conscience are stepping forward to protest having their "national home" and religion dragged through the blood of his continuing war crimes.
I would thank him for provoking what will hopefully become a sweeping house-cleaning of the "amen corner" boys and girls out of our Administration and Legislature: when Press Pipsqueak Ari Fleisher tells Colin Powell that he "doesn't know what he is talking about," it is clear that forces unfriendly, indeed hostile to the highest US interests, are running the show.
I would thank him, finally, for bringing the key survival issues for America to the forefront, and helping average Americans understand the folly of our current alleged "foreign policy" and the absolute wasteland of the Bush Family legacy.
As the Paul Simon song says "Every generation throws a hero up on the pop charts." Anyone who truly cares about the future of our country should be thanking Sharon for showing us how we have been sold out by those who would put Israeli interests over and above our own.
I would certainly want to register my total appreciation to Mr. Sharon before he is voted out of office by those within his own ranks who see that he is sending Israel into the garbage heap of history, and at the rate he is going, providing decades of cannon fodder for anti-Semites worldwide to remind us all of what has to rank as one of the most ignominous and destructive movements in modern times: may it never rise again.
6.
Sent by "Mark Graffis" <mgraffis@vitelcom.net> on Tue, 9 Jul 2002
Published on Monday, July 8, 2002 in the Times of London
Cameraman Records the Slaughter of Bicycling Children
by Stephen Farrell in Jenin
THE tank pulls into view, its barrel pointing straight down Jasmine Street towards the children cycling back from the shops after buying a chocolate bar.
On a nearby rooftop an amateur cameraman stops panning across the Jenin skyline and films the group of stick figures moving quickly away from the Israeli war machine. Suddenly a plume of orange erupts from the barrel and the cameraman dives for cover as shrapnel slams into the second-story wall just below him.
A hundred yards away teenagers sheltering behind walls look at the shell bouncing down the street, slamming first into the tarmac then into a low wall, where it explodes, blowing 11-year-old Tariq Abu Aziz off his bicycle and ripping apart his two brothers.
This is the first filmed record of the incident in which, Palestinians say, Israeli forces opened fire on civilians who ventured out into a quiet middle-class neighborhood of Jenin on June 21, mistakenly believing that the curfew had been lifted.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defense Minister, has apologized and the Israeli Army has announced an inquiry, conceding that initial inquiries suggested that its forces erred by firing two tank shells to disperse curfew-breaking Palestinians while its troops searched for a bomb factory near by.
Limping past the blood spattered wall where his brothers Jamil, 13, and Ahmed, six, were killed, Tariq winces in pain after three operations to repair his punctured stomach, kidneys and spleen.
We heard the earlier gunfire and we were running away. Some hid behind buildings and I was cycling in front, with Ahmed in the middle and Jamil at the back, he said, pointing to the spot in the dusty road. The first sign of trouble, he said, was a white car that turned into the street moments earlier, its horn blaring.
Suddenly there was an explosion and a cloud of black smoke. I was knocked off my bike. I was dizzy, but I got up and walked towards my house. I knew my brothers were injured, but I didnt know how badly.
Jamil, witnesses said, lay dying in the street calling: Dad, Dad. Ahmed was killed instantly, both his legs, an arm and his intestines strewn across Jasmine Street. It was only two weeks later, just before his discharge from hospital, that Tariq found out that his brothers were dead, although he had long suspected, after listening to indiscreet nurses pointing to the brother of the two martyrs. In the corner of the family courtyard lie three bicycles, Jamils orange mountain bike barely scratched, Tariqs red machine with its saddle punctured and Ahmeds tiny purple minibike, its handlebar snapped off. He was buried with his chocolate bar in his hand.
The boys father, Yousef, and mother, Hamda, can scarcely bear to watch the video, now worn out with constant playing for relatives.
This is a catastrophe, says Yousef, who adds that the Israeli authorities have not contacted him once. Two of my children killed and a third on the verge of dying. Why?
7.
June .24th, 2002
Targeting Medical Care; Israel's Recent Incursion into the West Bank Renews Attacks on Ambulances.
Sample Cases and Updates from Palestinian Population Centers in the West Bank:
CLIP
Jenin
The town is under curfew and ambulances find it difficult to travel within the town. In most cases ambulances are delayed, and their passage impeded. Passage to the Jenin refugee camp is only permitted after prior coordination via the ICRC; coordination sometimes takes up to 2-3 hours, and sometimes receives a negative response.
Ambulance personnel are at risk and fear attacks since there is often insufficient or no coordination between different tanks positioned in the town. While one tank permits passage, the next along the route is not informed, and the process of examination is repeated.
Friday, June 21, 2002 - Ihab Iyyadi, a PRCS medic was driving a UN ambulance, when at around 11:00 a call was received at the PRCS station to aid an injured man in the area of the square in the center of Jenin. Together with Ibrahim Dababneh, deputy director of PRCS Jenin, he drove to the square, and discovered that the patient was at the other end. When they reached him they found he was bleeding badly.
Ihab: "I got out of the ambulance and approached the patient. The Israeli tanks that were stationed 150-200 meters away immediately opened automatic fire. We escaped, leaving the patient and the ambulance. After a few minutes the shooting paused and I crawled to the patient and dragged him to a street corner. I managed to pass him to some people who passed in a civilian car, and they took him to Al-Razi hospital. At the next pause in the shooting I returned to the ambulance and drove it after the civilian car to the hospital. The ambulance was hit by bullets on the engine front and one of the indicators.
Ten minutes later I received a call saying that in the Bustan neighborhood in town a civilian car in which a doctor was traveling had been shot at and that he needed help. The doctor, Dr. Samer El-Ahmad, was hit in the back and the waist. His spleen was later extracted by surgery at the hospital. Near the car that was shot at were three children riding bicycles. A tank fired on them from a distance of 150-200 meters. One child was killed instantly, a second died shortly after and the third is now in the intensive care unit at the hospital in grave condition.
At 01:00 the PRCS station received a call about a tank shelling a private residence in the eastern neighborhood of Jenin, and we left quickly for the house. We found it destroyed, on top of its residents. We drew the injured people out from the rubble with our bare hands. There was one person killed, and 8 injured. The evacuation of the injured was delayed and impeded by soldiers in the tanks, who kept trying to explain that they had no connection the event. After we evacuated the body of a 13-year-old boy to the Jordanian field hospital in the Old City, the doctors determined his death. From there we continued with the body towards the governmental hospital, which has refrigeration [facilities]. About 200 meters before the hospital a tank stopped us, searched [the ambulance] and obliged us to open the bag with the body."
At Jenin, ambulances leave the station without prior coordination, but are continually detained.
Source: Ihab Iyyadi, PRCS Jenin
