The Israeli prime minister is intent on killing and repressing more Palestinians to secure a re-election victory. Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given his occupation army a free hand to step up the killing of Palestinians -- activists as well as innocent men, women and children -- under the pretext of fighting "terror". Sharon gave the instructions on the weekend after two Islamic Jihad fighters attacked a Jewish colonial outpost south-west of Hebron, killing four Israeli soldiers and settlers and injuring six other soldiers. The two Islamist guerrillas were subsequently killed in gun-battle with Israeli troop reinforcements. The attack on the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Otnael was carried out in retaliation for the extra-judicial execution by undercover Israeli forces of Yousuf Abu-Rub, an Islamic Jihad activist, on 26 December in Qabatya in the northern West Bank. According to eyewitnesses and information gathered by the Ramallah- based human rights group, LAW, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Abu- Rub after he surrendered. On the same day, Israeli troops murdered at least nine other Palestinians in Nablus, Tulkarm and Ramallah. The victims included a schoolboy and two activists in Nablus, a schoolboy and an activist in Ramallah, two activists in Tulkarm and two civilians in Gaza. Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, who masterminded the Jenin camp massacre in spring and ordered the assassination of scores of Palestinian political activists without charge or trial, has declared that the occupation army was finally "beating" the Palestinians. Mofaz made no mention of the daily death toll of Palestinian school children hunted down in the streets of West Bank towns by Israeli snipers and soldiers. Ten-year-old Abdul-Karim Salama was shot dead in Tulkarm on 29 December on his way home from school. According to eyewitnesses, Israeli soldiers manning an armoured personnel vehicle opened fire indiscriminately on schoolboys and girls, killing Salama on the spot and injuring his classmate. The Israeli army only fleetingly mentioned the child's killing, claiming he was hurling stones at Israeli military vehicles in the area. The implied rationale in the Israeli spokesman's statement was that "any Palestinian boy throwing a stone at an Israeli tank deserves to be executed on the spot." On 30 December, the Israeli occupation army killed five more Palestinians, including two school children and a middle-aged man who was cruelly executed immediately after his car accidentally ran into an Israeli army Jeep. One of the victims, 17-year-old Imran Abu-Hamdiyyeh, was beaten to death in front of his home in downtown Hebron because he violated the curfew. Eyewitnesses said five Israeli soldiers ganged up on the terrified teenager after they saw him walking outside his home. The soldiers reportedly beat him on the head using the butts of their rifles, then dumped his body at a nearby gas station. An ambulance was allowed to take him to hospital where he was declared dead. The Israeli army barely mentioned the incident. This week's wanton slaughter was coupled with the equally reckless destruction of Palestinian homes throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a practice aimed at brutalising relatives of Palestinian resistance activists. The Israeli army demolished more than 20 homes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In Dura, 13 kilometres south-west of Hebron, the Israeli army demolished four homes belonging to the families of four resistance activists, three of whom were already dead. Three more homes were demolished in Beit Ommar, just north of Hebron, on 30 December. A relative of the proprietors was apparently wanted for questioning by the Israeli army and had refused to surrender. Palestinians and human rights activists operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip speak of a marked escalation in the house-demolition policy, with the Israeli army destroying an average of five to seven homes on any given day. The destruction of civilian homes, which is often carried out at or shortly before dawn, is meant to inflict the maximum physical hardship and emotional pain on the families and relatives of Palestinian political and resistance activists. Innocent old men and women, as well as children, are brutally thrown onto the streets to watch their homes reduced to rubble. Meanwhile, the Sharon-Mofaz government, taking advantage of American silence, continued to expand West Bank settlements, a measure that is effectively burying the proposed two-state solution to the crisis even before it sees the light. This week, the Israeli government allocated hundreds of millions of shekels for what was described as the "re- enforcement of settlements". The plans include erecting electronic fences and hiring additional security guards to protect outlying settlements. Israel's open hostility towards, and violence against, its one-million strong Arab community have crushed any hopes for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis for many years to come.
