Israelis open a second front....

20 June 2003

They came in their hundreds, picking their way across fields and up the steep hillsides to gather on a remote, windswept hilltop in the West Bank. From a distance, amid the beauty of the hills, it looked like some great ritual gathering, but as you got close, you could see the crowd on the hill punching and kicking each other.

From time to time, there was a yelp of pain or a cry of rage. And, every now and then, people came rushing out of the crowd carrying a stretcher with someone writhing on top of it.

This was the scene as the Israeli army tried to dismantle the first inhabited Jewish settlement in the West Bank to be cleared under the road-map peace plan....

The UK Independent article speculates that the destruction of a "couple of tents, a rather temporary looking concrete house with a tin roof and a small metal hut that looked as if it was about to collapse under the weight of the news photographers and television cameramen who climbed on it," was for show, to impress US Secretary of State Colin Powell, due to arrive today for peace talks.

The story also commented on Israeli restraint.

On the road to the settlement, a couple of army bulldozers were stuck, unable to move because a crowd of settlers were sitting in front of them. It was extraordinary to see the Israeli army, which regularly uses live ammunition against Palestinian protesters, brought to a standstill by a few unarmed youths.

When peace activists tried the same tactic against Israeli bulldozers trying to tear down Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip, it went tragically wrong and an American activist, Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death by a bulldozer. But it was Israeli houses being demolished yesterday and the army was careful. Most of the soldiers were armed only with knives.

An optimistic interpretation would be that the IDF learned from Rachel Corrie's death.

Now, why don't I believe that?

Complete story here.