With most West Bank Palestinians stuck in their homes following the expansion of the curfew, Israel continued to wreak havoc by destroying a historical building. Khaled Amayreh reports from Hebron Click to view caption With callous and often criminal indifference, the Israeli army continued for the second consecutive week to literally imprison more than one million Palestinians in their own homes. The curfew, a term that fails to capture the ugliness of the collective and open-ended confinement imposed on the Palestinian people, is being employed once again. This time Israel has extended it to cover much of the Palestinian countryside, especially in the central and northern parts of the West Bank. Those under curfew are consequently stuck in their box-like concrete homes, often without food. Compounded with the frustrations of unemployment, poverty and family pressures, such prolonged imprisonment can only have an incendiary effect. Indeed, as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Ha'aretz on 30 June, the curfew will only postpone the next wave of suicide bombings. "It is not hard to guess the plans that are being hatched in the curfew period by those who have been condemned to such a hard life. One thing we can be sure of is that no one there is planning to absorb a further 35 years of occupation without resistance." With this latest extension of the curfew into the countryside livestock are also imprisoned and, in some cases, face the prospect of starvation. Anyone who dares break the curfew meets with an immediate and violent response. Last week, three small children, two of them brothers, were killed in Jenin when an Israeli tank fired two shells at civilians for "violating the curfew". The children were apparently under the impression that the curfew had been temporarily lifted and that they might consequently venture outside for a little while. These victims of Israeli state terror lengthen the list of the more than 300 Palestinian children under the age of 12 killed by the Israeli army and Israeli paramilitary activity since the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000. Children make up more than 21 per cent of the total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation troops during the past 22 months. In the Gaza Strip, children comprise 26 per cent of the total victims of Israeli terror while the corresponding percentage in the West Bank is slightly over 16 per cent. Also bringing Palestinian children into contact with the terror wreaked by the Israeli army is its continued use of house- to-house searches. Many children, too, have seen their male family members rounded up by the army. It is believed that as many as 9,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel during the past few months. Most of the detainees are put in detention camps where the conditions are extremely harsh. The most Draconian measure the Israeli army took in the West Bank this week was the clumsy and callous demolition of the Imara complex, the largest government building in West Bank, and one of the largest in Palestine. The huge building, built by the British in 1938 and used successively as local government headquarters by the British, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian authorities, had been under siege for five days before the Israeli army chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, on 29 June issued the order to blow it up. The order is widely viewed as an expression of vengeance on Mofaz's part, and a continuation of the "scorched-earth policy" pursued by Israel toward the Palestinians. Some local Palestinian leaders seeking to save the building from destruction had offered to go inside to convince the "wanted persons" who had presumably taken refuge in the building to surrender. However, when former Palestinian Authority Minister Talal Sider toured the badly-battered complex for two hours, using a megaphone to call to the people presumed to be inside to surrender, he neither heard nor saw anyone in the building. Even so, the Israelis refused to abort their plans, and around 3am on 29 June, the army packed the fortress-like building with explosives, effecting a huge blast that produced an impact similar to that of a powerful earthquake shaking the ground within a 10- kilometre radius. The huge explosion utterly destroyed the building, reducing it to several huge piles of rubble, and shattered the windows of numerous buildings in Hebron. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to print, Israeli army bulldozers were still flattening the rubble. And so far, no bodies of the suspected "wanted" Palestinians have been found. Palestinian leaders, including Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natshe, described the destruction of the historical building as "underscoring Israeli unbridled savagery and incivility". Even some Israeli military figures criticised the destruction of the building. "It was a folly, it shows that the Israeli government and army are acting with needless panic, it's a disgrace," said Meir Pa'il, a former member of the Israeli Knesset and a military historian. "It's a shame, because what did they have there? Garbage. If they really wanted to arrest the people, they could have gone into the building, but instead they destroyed it in a clumsy way and not only that, but the people inside got away. It's humiliating." On 30 June, the Israeli army assassinated two Hamas activists in Nablus, including Muhannad Taher, whom Israel accuses of masterminding attacks on Israeli occupation soldiers. Hamas vowed to avenge the killing, saying "bloodshed will be met with bloodshed". "Defensive walls will not withstand our fighters, who will strike at the heart of Zionism," said a statement issued by Hamas military wing.
