April 4, 2003	Friday	Safar 1, 1424

JENIN: Zekariya Zubeidi never spends more than two hours in one place because he is on the run from the Israeli army.

His pistol at his hip, Zubeidi moves from house to house in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank to avoid detection. His eyes are bloodshot and his face dotted with small black scars after what he called an army attempt to kill him.

If Zubeidi is killed, he will bequeath his position as local leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — one of the main militant groups waging a 30-month-old uprising for an independent Palestinian state — to a young comrade-in-arms.

At 27, he is a veteran of the revolt. He says all the Brigades’ experienced leaders in Jenin have been killed and a new generation of militants has emerged, the average age of whom is about 20. Many are teenagers and the youngest is just 16.

“A new generation has emerged because all the senior leaders have been killed. They volunteer and we give them what is needed (guns),” Zubeidi said in an interview in an abandoned house in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

He acknowledges that losing so many experienced leaders has dealt a severe blow to the Brigades, an armed offshoot of President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, but says it has not sapped their resolve to fight to the death.

“These teenagers have a strong morale and they have a very strong spirit. They are braver than the older ones,” he said.

RESISTANCE CONTINUES: The refugee camp, a warren of narrow streets which is home to about 14,000 people, was badly damaged during an Israeli army siege a year ago which was intended to wipe out Palestinian militants after a wave of suicide bombings in Israel.

The camp was devastated by army shelling, gunfire and house-to-house fighting. An empty space of about 300 square metres (3,230 square feet), where the rubble has now been cleared, serves as a monument to the fierce battles of a year ago.

But militants keep fighting, despite the greater firepower of the Israeli army, which blocks roads into the city of about 30,000 people and carries out frequent raids and swoops for militants in the refugee camp.

Israel has often referred to Jenin as a terrorist stronghold. At times it has even called it the capital of terrorism.

After the army raids and blockades that have sealed off cities across the West Bank, the militants’ campaign has been muted but not wiped out.

“Twenty ‘career’ fighters from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have been killed and 60 are in Israeli prisons. But everything here has been reorganized. We will never stop,” Zubeidi said.

“It is impossible to conquer the entire Palestinian people unless they hang, execute all the Palestinian people.”

Although the militants are outgunned and outnumbered, Zubeidi said they are bolstered by the support of local people fed up with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it seized during the 1967 Middle East war.

“Whenever and wherever I need refuge, people welcome me. The nearest home will take me in and hide me,” he said. “I don’t sleep in the same house two days in a row and don’t stay in the same place for even two hours.”

The Brigades are not well off. Zubeidi says that Arafat’s Fatah provides them with no financial support and that their funding comes mainly from donations from private sources.

STATEHOOD DREAMS AND REVENGE: The new generation is driven by a dream of ending Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and a desire for revenge for what they regard as Israeli aggression, including the demolition of militants’ family homes and the blockades of towns and cities.

Israel says its military operations in the two territories are self-defence, required to prevent militant attacks on Israelis. It blamed groups such as the Brigades for the fact that violence continues 30 months after it began.

Some militants are driven by despair as well as revenge. Zubeidi is bitter about the death of his mother and two brothers, killed by Israeli forces during the conflict.

“What do you expect of a man who sees his mother and brother killed and his home demolished?” he said.

Zubeidi said he had not been involved in any suicide attacks although he coordinates local operations with other militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have carried out suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of people in Israel.

The militants in Jenin are armed mainly with assault rifles and pistols. Some have used home-made bombs. They also have four submachine guns stolen from Israeli troops, Zubeidi said.

He said some weapons had also been bought from Israeli soldiers — an M-16 assault rifle cost 25,000 shekels ($5,300) and each bullet cost two shekels (nearly 40 US cents).

The militants’ tactics are limited mainly to ambushes and sniper attacks on isolated groups of soldiers. Some militants have attacked Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Their campaign has neither achieved the goal of ending Israel’s occupation and nor that of securing an independent Palestinian state. Israel is determined not to do anything that smacks of rewarding the Palestinians for violence.

However, the international community is pressing both sides to accept a “roadmap” to peace under which a Palestinian state would be established by the end of 2005.

Under this plan, the Palestinians would make sweeping democratic changes and halt violence, while the Israelis would freeze the building of settlements and pull back troops.

Asked on what terms he would accept a ceasefire, Zubeidi said: “A complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and an end to assassinations.”

He was referring to Israel’s policy of locating and killing militants it blames for attacks on Israelis. Such killings have become common. Zubeidi said that Israel has twice come close to killing him. He left a house to buy coffee earlier this year and it was blown up as he returned, killing two others and wounding him. He also escaped an attack by troops last year.

Asked if he feared death, he said: “I am not afraid. If I were, I would not have chosen this path.”—Reuters