IDF and Housing Ministry officials are looking into
expropriating land straddling the road between Kiryat Arba
and Me'oras Hamachpela in Hebron to create a contiguous link
between the two settlements. The 1,300-meter shortcut dubbed
"Worshipers' Way" is where last Friday night's ambush which
killed 12 security personnel took place. Prime Minister
Sharon, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, and Internal Security
Minister Uzi Landau went to the site of the attack,
accompanied by Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon.
Sharon was reported to have told IDF officers there that
Israel should take advantage of the attack to create the
territorial link.
Housing Minister Natan Sharansky said he brought the idea to
the cabinet this week, but that it was not voted on.
Sharon said the status quo in the Me'oras Hamachpela, that
has it divided between Jews and Moslems for most of the year,
should not be altered.
According to one report Sharon revived an old plan of his to
secure the Jews in the city and reduce the number of
Palestinians under Israeli control. Sharon presented this
idea to prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 1996, of
creating a "security sleeve" on parts of the road linking
Kiryat Arba to the Machpela Cave, the Avraham Ovinu quarter,
Beit Romano, Beit Hadassah, Tel Rumeida, and the Jewish
cemetery.
Under this plan, some 2,000 Palestinians in the city, rather
than 20,000 today, would come under IDF control. Netanyahu
rejected the plan.
Housing Minister Sharansky called for the government to
declare the Hebron Protocols "null and void." Sharon
responded, according to participants in the meeting, that
from his point of view the agreement is already null and
void, and there is no reason for a cabinet decision on the
matter.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu used the same terminology to
describe the Oslo Accords, as well as the Hebron accord,
which he signed in 1997. In an interview on Israel Radio,
Netanyahu said: "All the Oslo agreements, what remains of
them, are null and void. All the agreements were voided by
[Yasser] Arafat."
At Sunday's Cabinet meeting, IDF Chief Ya'alon said that the
cell that carried out the attack was known to the
authorities, and had left Hebron when the IDF moved in, only
to come back when the IDF withdrew. Ya'alon also said that
Arafat had torpedoed attempts by the Tanzim and Fatah to
reach a cease-fire. Arafat's interest, Ya'alon said, is for
the terror to continue, not that it stop.
Jewish residents of Hebron have come out against Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal for a walled security
corridor. The residents insist that the government actively
eliminate the terrorists and oppose erecting defenses. At one
point, their homes in the middle of Arab neighborhoods did
not even have bars on the windows.
The IDF demolished the home of Muhammad Sidar, the head of
the Islamic Jihad military infrastructure in Hebron. Security
forces continued to operate throughout Hebron and its
environs.
The operation launched last weekend will continue for a
number of weeks, security officials said, noting that its aim
is to destroy the Islamic Jihad terrorist infrastructure in
the city and the surrounding villages, arrest fugitives and
suspected terrorists, and search for weapons stockpiles and
bomb factories.
So far, 44 Palestinians have been arrested, among them four
fugitives. One would-be suicide bomber was apprehended.
Officials will examine the sequence of events in the incident
Friday evening to determine why there were so many casualties
and why personnel entered the alley to evacuate the wounded
without assessing the situation or identifying the exact
source of gunfire. Officials will also study whether
improvements need to be made in the communication and
coordination between soldiers, the police and Border Police,
and local emergency response teams.
Security forces also demolished the homes of other terrorists
in the Hebron area. In Yatta, troops demolished the home of
Tanzim terrorist Khalil Aram, who trained the terrorist cell
which perpetrated shooting attacks near the Ziv junction on
July 26 and October 8 in which four people were killed.
In the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, security forces
demolished the homes of Khaled Tswalah, a member of Islamic
Jihad; of Yusef Atallah, a member of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, who perpetrated the attack in
Bracha on August 31 in which two people were wounded; and
Muhammad Atallah, a member of the Fatah involved in the
suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in which five people were killed
and 40 wounded.
In the Gaza Strip, IAF helicopters bombed a Khan Yunis
factory used to manufacture rockets. Several hours later, a
mortar shell was fired at a community in the northern Gaza
Strip.
Etty Galiah, 48, a mother of seven and a resident of Kochav
Hashahar, in the West Bank, for 22 years, was shot and killed
by a Palestinian terrorist on her way home from work in
Jerusalem on Monday.
