February 26, 2002	Tuesday	Zilhaj 13, 1422

AL QUDS: Leila Katawi was woken up by a blast of gunfire and mosque loudspeakers calling on Palestinians to “defend the camp”. Still in her nightgown, she crept on to the roof of her shelter in Balata refugee camp. She died almost immediately - cut down in a hail of bullets from an Israeli army base on Jarzim mountain, overlooking the West Bank and the Palestinian city of Nablus.

She was the first to die as Israeli army undercover squads, supported by armour and helicopters, moved into the camp, which is home to about 22,000 Palestinians. The second was to be Salah a-Din Fraj, an armed activist from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and a father of five, killed in the gunfights throughout the camp.

The army raid was intended to arrest or kill fighters belonging to the Al Aqsa Brigades, a group linked to Fatah. The day before the group had claimed responsibility for two armed attacks and a suicide bombing in Gaza and the West Bank, leaving four Israelis dead.

The army did not find its quarry. In the words of Fatah leader Hussam Khader, Balata moved “as a camp” to safeguard the fighters’ sanctuary, pushing back the invaders. “Men fired Kalashnikov rifles, youths laid homemade mines, and women and children threw stones,” he says. ”We lost two martyrs, but it was a victory for the Palestinians. We defended ourselves. The army could not enter Balata even during the occupation. It can’t do so. The people will resist. The mood now really is victory or death.”

The battle for Balata was one episode in a bloody week for both Palestinians and Israelis. Since last Monday, 40 Palestinians and 11 Israelis have been killed. Of the Palestinian deaths, 21 were police officers, as Israel bombed and rocketed Palestinian Authority security positions in Gaza and the West Bank in desperate reprisal for the Palestinian attacks.

Of the Israelis, two were settlers, one was a police officer, eight were soldiers and all were killed in the occupied territories. This is evidence - some say - of a new Palestinian strategy to concentrate attacks on the occupation rather than on civilians inside Israel itself. If so, the implications for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could be far-reaching, says one leading Israeli peace activist, who refused to be named.

“The green line separating Israel from Gaza and the West Bank is not just the territorial border between the two peoples. It is also the moral border. When Palestinians attack Israelis on our side of the border, it can legitimately be called terrorism. When they attack us on their side, it can legitimately be called national resistance.”

In the West Bank the tactics are to ambush army checkpoints (“Symbols of Palestinian humiliation at the hands of the occupation troops,” according to Fatah West Bank leader Marwan Barghouti) or dispatch suicide bombers deep into the heart of Jewish settlements, the “facts” of national dispossession and Israeli colonialism in the eyes of just about every Palestinian.

In the Gaza Strip the armed struggle is already more developed, with Palestinian guerrillas firing mortars at settlements and launching rudimentary rockets at military bases and Israeli towns that line the Strip’s border with Israel. These are not the only resemblances to Hezbollah’s warfare in Lebanon.

On Feb 14, Palestinian fighters sprayed machine-gun fire at a bus convoy heading for Gaza’s Netzarim settlement, causing no injuries. A vast Merkava tank lumbered into position to counter-attack and was ripped apart by an 80kg roadside bomb, killing three Israeli soldiers.

The Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the ambush. Forged in the first months of the uprising to defend Palestinian towns, villages and camps in southern Gaza from army incursions, it is another grassroots militia. It is made up of all the Palestinian factions, although dominated by Fatah members.

Jamal Abu Samhandanah is one of the resistance committees’ leaders. Like the Al Aqsa Brigades - with whom he has “good relations” - he typifies the “young guard” of Palestinian military leaders who have come to the fore in the intifada. He is, the “most wanted” Palestinian fighter in Gaza, accused by Israel of being behind attacks on soldiers and settlers.

Samhandanah is unambiguous. “We are not against negotiations if they realise our national goals of an Israeli withdrawal, a Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967 and the right of return. When those negotiations begin we will give up our arms. But we won’t surrender our guns for a CIA ceasefire so we can resume security co-operation with Israel. Arafat can believe in the American dream if he wants to. But for us and for the Palestinian people the dream is over. It’s as dead as Oslo.” —Dawn/The Observer News Service.