Israeli Occupation Troops Storm Jenin, Pull Back from Areas in Hebron, Al-Khalil

26/10/2002| IslamWeb

HIGHLIGHTS: Pull Back from Hebron, Al-Khalil, Propoganda Stunt: Palestinians||5 Palestinians Injured in Jenin Including 17-year Old Boy in Serious Condition||Men Rounded up in Jenin, Some Taken Away||Occupation Army Takes Area, South Gaza & Sets Army Post There||Occupation Army Briefly Enters Rafah, Destroys House|| STORY: Israel launched its biggest occupation army operation in three months as the occupation occupation army stormed Jenin in a payback for a resistance bombing this week which killed 14 Israelis.

As the occupation army hunted down Islamic resistance activists in Jenin, it pulled occupation troops out of Palestinian sectors in the flashpoint city of Hebron, Al-Khalil except for two strategic hillsides.

The move came as Israel looked to show the world it wants to alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip where its occupation army has sealed off towns and enforced blanket curfews in a bid to foil resistance bombers.

Five Palestinians were wounded in Jenin, where armored vehicles patrolled the city in search of the masterminds of the resistance car bomb that incinerated a bus in northern Israel on Monday, hospital and security sources said.

One of the wounded, a 17-year-old boy, was in serious condition after being hit by machinegun fire, hospital sources said.

At least 40 tanks, jeeps and armoured vehicles rumbled into the town and its refugee camp in the pre-dawn raid dubbed "Operation Vanguard."

Occupation soldiers were shooting in the streets as they carried out door-to-door searches and enforced a curfew, security sources said.

Men were rounded up at gunpoint for questioning, and some of them were taken away by the occupation army , according to the same sources.

It was the biggest occupation army offensive since the occupation army entered the West Bank city of Nablus after a bombing killed seven Israelis in a cafeteria at Jerusalem's Hebrew university at the end of July, the occupation army said.

It was also the largest offensive on Jenin, which Israel dubs the city of resistance bombers, since hundreds of occupation soldiers battled it out with Palestinian resistance activists in early April during the occupation army 's six-week invasion of the West Bank.

That operation ended with the Jenin refugee camp flattened, 52 people dead, including 13 Israeli soldiers, and the Palestinian side accusing Israel of a massacre.

Israeli occupation troops, meanwhile, pulled back Friday from the Palestinian autonomous area in the West Bank city of Hebron except for two strategic hillsides, the occupation army announced.

Palestinian residents said jeeps had pulled out of the city's north en masse Friday afternoon.

The occupation army confirmed their withdrawal in a statement but warned of a "severe Israeli response" in case of any future attacks by Palestinian snipers on the heavily-guarded Jewish settlers' enclave in the city's centre.

It said the redeployment arrived in the framework of "a series of actions aimed at improving the lives of Palestinian inhabitants."

But the pullback seemed purely symbolic as occupation troops were set to remain on the hills overlooking the sector where some 600 radical Jewish settlers live.

The two positions on the hills of Abu Sneineh and Harat Al Sheikh are at the very heart of the area controlled by Hebron's 120,000 Palestinian majority.

Israeli occupation army bulldozers, trailers and jeeps also took over a Palestinian area south of Gaza City in an apparent attempt to set up a small occupation army post there, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.

Occupation soldiers fired shots at a group of journalists near the building site, which lies next to the Israeli settlement of Netzarim where the occupation army has a full-fledged base.

Gaza security chief General Abdul Razeq al-Majeida said "the occupation army is constructing a new occupation army base by Netzarim close to the sea, which is very dangerous for the lives of civilians.

Israeli tanks carried out a small incursion in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, destroying a house there, security sources said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Israeli occupation army and border police jeeps line up as they begin to withdraw from a neighborhood in the southwest of the West Bank town of Hebron, Al-Khalil Friday Oct. 25, 2002. The convoy of jeeps drove out of the Palestinian sector of Hebron in a partial withdrawal but remain in three nighborhoods from which Palestinian resistance men frequently attacked Jewish settlements in the center of town. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)
- Oct 25 12:54 PM