'The business of criminals'

Despite the arrest of three PFLP militants, the Israeli government has reneged on its promise to allow Yasser Arafat freedom of movement and its forces have killed several Palestinians. Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem
The Israeli government initially welcomed last week's arrest of three Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activists by Palestinian Authority (PA) policemen in Nablus. The three are suspected of killing ultra-right-wing Israeli Minister of Tourism Rahavam Zeevi several months ago. The detention was "a positive development," said the Israelis.
But despite the move, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat remains confined to Ramallah by the Israeli military.
The decision to keep Arafat caged came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the bulk of his cabinet ministers easily over-ruled Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eleizer. The two had argued for allowing Arafat to leave Ramallah.
The decision was, in effect, a classical case of adding insult to injury. PA officials had been assured several times that if the PFLP militants were arrested, the siege on Arafat would be lifted immediately.
The Israeli lack of action -- which coincided with the Eid Al-Adha holiday, one of the holiest in the Muslim calendar -- infuriated the PA leadership. The Israeli decision, argued Palestinian critics of Arafat's policies, showed that no matter what the Palestinian leadership was willing to do to appease Israeli demands, the Sharon government would make still more humiliating demands on the Palestinians -- to the point of complete Palestinian surrender.
PFLP officials described the arrest of their men in Nablus, coupled with the continued incarceration of the group's secretary-general Ahmed Sa'adat, as "bordering on treason."
"We hold the PA leadership and their Chief of General Intelligence Tawfik Al-Tirawi responsible for the safety of our comrades," warned a statement issued by the PFLP following the arrest of the three activists.
Conscious of his predicament, Al-Tirawi went so far as to claim that there was no connection between the decision to arrest the PFLP activists and Israeli conditions for ending the siege on Arafat.
Al-Tirawi argued that the three were arrested to protect them from probable assassination by Israeli forces or agents. It is an argument that few Palestinians were willing to buy.
The refusal to allow Arafat to leave Ramallah was by no means the only broken Israeli promise, however.
On the eve of Eid, Israeli and Palestinian security officials met for the first time in weeks. At the time, the meeting seemed to be a promising effort to re-establish the cease-fire.
During the 21 February meeting, Israeli commanders reportedly undertook to end the policy of assassinating Palestinian resistance and political activists, as long as Palestinians, too, observed the cease-fire.
No sooner had the meeting ended, however, than Israeli occupation soldiers murdered a Palestinian man in cold blood. The man was buying new clothes as Eid gifts for his children in the centre of Hebron.
According to eyewitnesses, Israeli occupation troops, posted on the rooftops of high buildings overlooking the town's Bab El- Zawiya commercial centre, suddenly began firing randomly and indiscriminately on people shopping for Eid celebrations down below in the busy thoroughfare.
One random bullet hit Abdel-Ghani Mujahed, 32, in the head, piercing his brain and exiting at his forehead. He died instantly.
Mujahed, a poor tractor driver who made a second income from hauling water-tanks uphill to neighbourhoods in the hilly city, was killed as he was leaving home, having bought new clothes for his children.
Asked if he could make sense of what happened, Raed Sharabati, a shopkeeper who witnessed the incident, said: "What sense! They are criminals, and the business of criminals is to commit crimes and murder innocent people. This is not the first time they have done it, and it won't be the last."
The Israeli army and Israel's media completely ignored the murder of Mujahed, who is survived by five children and a young wife. The family's tragic loss seems to have occurred for no other reason than an Israeli soldier being in a bad mood.
Nor was Mujahed the only innocent Palestinian to be murdered over the Eid-Ul-Adha period.
On Saturday, the second day of the festival, a young college student from Halhul, just north of Hebron, was walking to his neighborhood mosque for the dawn prayer. Israeli soldiers, guarding an outpost 500 metres away, suddenly opened fire on him, killing him on the spot.
An Israeli army spokesman issued a terse statement claiming the youth, named Firas Khaled Al-Baou, was reciting "Islamic slogans" when the soldiers gunned him down.
Praising God and reciting "Allah-u-Akbar" ("God is Great") is standard Muslim practice during the four days of Eid Al-Adha. Al-Baou was doing just that when the soldiers unquestioningly shot him.
Then there is the tale of the two pregnant women. On Sunday 24 February, Israeli army soldiers manning a roadblock near Hiwwara, south of Nablus, opened fire on a car carrying a woman in labour who was on her way to hospital. The woman was seriously wounded.
The Israeli army claimed that the soldier who opened fire did not know that another soldier had motioned to the car to proceed. The soldier opened fire thinking the car had moved without permission to do so.
The following day, an even bloodier "mistake" was made. The very same soldier opened fire on yet another car passing through the same roadblock, again carrying a pregnant woman in her ninth month to the hospital.
This time his blind bullets injured the woman, Mayson Al-Hayek, 22, and killed her husband Mohamed, also 22. Her father-in-law, also in the car, was seriously injured. The Israeli army once again issued a dismissive statement which said "the army is investigating the incident."
On the same day, 25 February, an Israeli soldier publicly admitted that soldiers manning roadblocks throughout the West Bank shoot and kill Palestinians without any rhyme or reason.
The anonymous soldier was quoted by Reuters. "We are seized by fear, that is why we shoot them," he said.
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