Kindgo
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By Ibrahim Hazboun Associated Press Writer
Published: Aug 3, 2002
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA7BWZTF4D.html
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - Israeli soldiers pried open boarded-up shops and searched houses in Nablus on Saturday, pressing their latest siege to root out militant cells Israel says are responsible for recent attacks.
Bulldozers piled up soil and rubble to block the entrances to Nablus' Old City while tanks and armored vehicles crawled through its empty streets, enforcing a strict curfew on the city of about 200,000.
Witnesses said several people were arrested Saturday in addition to the 50 rounded up Friday, the first day of the army crackdown which followed two bombings in Jerusalem last week.
Armed with hammers and metal bars, Israeli soldiers wound through the casbah's narrow alleys, opening shuttered shop fronts and searching houses. In one instance, filmed by Associated Press Television News, a Palestinian man led the way as troops entered an alley and searched a shop.
The circumstances of the search were not clear. Palestinians and human rights groups have alleged that Israeli troops have forced Palestinian civilians to lead troops in potentially dangerous searches - a charge Israel has denied.
An army spokesman, Olivier Rafowicz, denied the man was being used as a human shield and said the search was part of Israel's ongoing war on terrorism.
"The army is acting with the utmost caution in order to differentiate between innocent civilians and terrorists," he said.
Later Saturday, the remains of American student Marla Bennett, 24, of San Diego, who was killed in Wednesday's bombing at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, were to be returned to the United States.
The remains of two other Americans were returned Friday, while an Israeli-American was buried in Jerusalem. The remains of an American-French citizen were to be returned to France Monday.
The five, as well as two Israelis, were killed when a bomb exploded in the cafeteria of Hebrew University's Mt. Scopus campus.
The militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for an Israeli air strike on Gaza that killed Hamas' military leader and 14 others, nine of them children.
Israeli officials say Nablus has replaced nearby Jenin as the main hub of Palestinian terrorist cells responsible for attacks in the past two weeks.
Despite the recent attacks and Israel's stepped-up siege, Israeli officials suggested Saturday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was willing to meet with the new Palestinian interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh.
"It could be, it depends on the developments in the situation," said Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin.
Sharon has not met with top Palestinian officials for months, although his dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, has held several meetings recently with Yehiyeh and the new finance minister, Salam Fayed.
No date for a meeting has been set, and the Israelis were waiting to see if the Palestinians made good on promises to reform the Palestinian Authority, Gissin said.
Peres, meanwhile, plans to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday in Cairo, a Peres adviser, Yoram Dori said.
Nablus has been under an Israeli military curfew for most of the past six weeks, along with other Palestinian population centers occupied after back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem killed 26 people.
Nablus residents defied the curfew from Sunday to Wednesday, but the military reinforced it Thursday after the Hebrew University bombing. Early Friday, more than 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into the city and soldiers began searching houses, arresting about 50 people.
The military said it found and blew up two buildings in the Old City that were being used as explosives laboratories.
One of the houses belonged to Hiba Atari, 21, and her husband, Ibrahim, a fugitive member of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement who is wanted by Israel.
Walking amid the rubble of her home on Saturday, holding the youngest of her three children, Hiba Atari said troops came to the home Friday morning, told her they would destroy it, and then detained her for several hours.
"The Israelis handcuffed me and blindfolded me and took me to an army base," she said. "There they were asking me about my husband the entire time."
"The entire day I was thinking about my girls. I didn't know where they were staying and if they had anything to eat," she said, adding that the girls, ages 1 through 4, were with a neighbor.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
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