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Israeli Tanks Sweep Tulkarem Refugee Camp
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Israeli army to launch massive incursions into Nablus and Tulkarem, modeled on a 17-day deadly offensive in Jenin Sunday
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NABLUS,
West Bank, November 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In a fresh
wide scale attack, Israeli armored vehicles early Tuesday, November 12,
swept into Tulkarem Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
Israeli
occupation forces opened fire from some 20 tanks, jeeps and armored
personnel carriers, Palestinian security officials said. It was not
clear if there were victims, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
An
Israeli army spokesman refused to comment, said AFP.
Tuesday's
incursion follows a decision by the far-right government of Ariel Sharon
to resume military offensives after the departure October 30 of
ministers of the Labor party.
Earlier,
Israeli state television said Israel's new right-wing government was
poised to launch tough attacks after the Palestinian resistance attack
on Kibbutz Metzer in northern Israel that avenged Israel’s
assassination of an Islamic Jihad chief.
Kibbutz
Metzer was founded on Palestinian land in 1953 by members of the Jewish
“Hashomer HaTza’ir” youth movement who immigrated to Israel from
Argentina. Until the 1967 war, it was a border settlement.
The
Israeli occupation army is expected to launch massive incursions into
the northern West Bank towns of Nablus and Tulkarem, modeled on a 17-day
deadly offensive in Jenin which some 1,000 forces wrapped up Sunday,
November 10.
Late
Monday night, the Israeli army demolished the home of Mohammed Naifa, in
the town of Shweike, north of TulKarem. The army holds Naifa – Fatah
leader in the Tulkarem area – for dispatching the activist who carried
out the Kibbutz Metzer retaliatory operation late Sunday night.
Naifeh
"was responsible for the [Metzer] attack," the army spokesman
said in a statement, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz
reported.
The
Kibbutz attack was claimed by Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed
offshoot of the resistance Fatah movement, which said it was revenge for
the army's assassination of a chief of the Palestinian resistance
movement Islamic Jihad.
But
the Fatah leadership later said the movement was not responsible for the
Kibbutz attack and reiterated its condemnation of all attacks targeting
civilians.
"Fatah
has no link with this operation ... nor with the statement from the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claiming it," a statement from an
"official spokesman" of the movement said.
Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat condemned the killings though Israeli
authorities blamed his Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile,
new hawks in Sharon’s cabinet pressed for the expulsion of Arafat,
laying the blame for attacks by resistance groups at his door, public
radio said.
Foreign
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard line former premier, called for
Israel to "get rid" of Arafat, but Sharon advised restraint
for the moment, as the move would cause outcry in the Arab world as
Israel's main ally Washington prepares strikes against Iraq.
Netanyahu
was appointed last week after the center-left Labor party walked out of
Sharon's coalition, causing the government to lurch to the right.
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