http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=110208
'Israeli death squad disarmed men and shot them'
By Phil Reeves in Salfit, West Bank 15 December 2001
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, says some of his
government's military strikes against the Palestinians make him
"shudder".
Mr Peres would have had good reason to shudder yesterday, had he
listened to the testimonies of the residents of Salfit. They described
in detail how an Israeli undercover death squad arrived in the West
Bank town in a pre- dawn raid and shot two young policemen at close
range as they lay unarmed on the ground.
The Israeli soldiers, dressed in black, spoke Arabic so fluently that
Iman Herzala - who heard them talking in the street outside her house
- at first wondered whether they were Palestinian forces taking part
in a training exercise. But that was before she saw the executions,
less than 100 yards from her front door.
Residents had scraped earth over the spot, but yesterday afternoon
patches of blood were visible. A low wall bore the marks of several
bullets.
Looking hollow-eyed and distressed, Mrs Herzala, 37, who has six
children, described the last moments of Dia Nabil Mahmoud, 19, and
Abdul Ashour, 22.
They were among seven people to be killed by the Israelis yesterday in
raids on more than four communities in the occupied territories as
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, increased his military
pressure on the Palestinians. At the same time, Israeli tanks and
bulldozers carried out their biggest housing demolition of the
intifada at Khan Younis in the Gaza strip, knocking down 35 houses and
making 345 people homeless.
Mr Mahmoud - a member of Yasser Arafat's Force 17 security force - and
Mr
Ashour, from Palestinian military intelligence, were shot in the early
stages of the Israeli raid in which tanks and bulldozers, backed by
helicopters, came thundering into the Palestinian-run town of 10,000
near Nablus at around 2am.
Mrs Herzala said: "The two boys came and knocked on my door, and told
me that the Israelis were invading the town. I opened the door and
asked them to come inside, but they refused and went on walking up the
street. The Israeli soldiers came up to them and asked them to put
down their weapons - they only had one - and put their hands behind
their backs.
"They put down the gun. The Israelis asked them to lie on the ground,
which they did. Then they started shooting them with machine-guns."
She said she watched the scene - illuminated by the light of the
soldiers' torches - by peering out of her front door. At the same
time, Khadiji al-Fataj, 61, was looking down at the spot where the
execution took place from the window of her home, a few doors from Mrs
Herzala's. She said: "I heard soldiers asking the policemen to stop
and lie down. One was on one side of the road, and one on the other. I
saw them being shot."
Yesterday afternoon, as the women told their stories, Mr Mahmoud's
father sat close by the spot, dazed and exhausted. "He was just a
child. If you look at his picture, you can see that," he said.
The Israeli armed forces said the Salfit raid was in response to
"murderous terrorist attacks" in the area.
The wording of their official explanation was suspiciously vague:
Israeli soldiers came on "armed Palestinians who came out of targets
for detention. They stormed the terrorists and killed them."
Mr Sharon has moved military operations into a higher gear.
Yesterday's operations were aimed at Fatah, the mainstream
organisation headed by Yasser Arafat. The six people killed in Salfit
were all part of Mr Arafat's
security apparatus. Three homes were destroyed, all belonging to Fatah
members.
Mr Sharon is bludgeoning the rickety structure of the Palestinian
Authority, liquidating its police and attacking the middle-ground
pro-Arafat leadership. But there is dissent in the government ranks.
Mr Peres told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Mr Sharon's
decision to shun the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. Mr Peres
reportedly said: "I asked him [Sharon], 'Suppose Arafat disappears,
what will happen then?'"
