Palestinians see cruelty, pettiness in damage

Israel says troops razed only what they had to

By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY

Palestinians see cruelty, pettiness in damage — USA Today, 25 April 2002 — USA Today · McLean, VA (national edition) · 25 April 2002

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Transcribed from the clipping

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Mohammed al-Assmar is still trying to figure out how his ’78 Fiat fit into Israel’s plans to crush Palestinian terrorism on the West Bank. The little yellow car was destroyed during Israel’s military assault on this West Bank city, the unofficial Palestinian capital. Israeli troops hauled the crumpled Fiat into the street to use as a barricade.

Now Assmar, 47, a Palestinian civil servant, can’t ferry his three kids to school. “I don’t think my car was a terrorist,” he says. Such bewilderment and anger are common here as Palestinians survey losses from Israel’s 25-day incursion.

In addition to destroying civilian property and claiming an unknown number of lives, Israeli troops demolished, damaged or seized much of what Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority needs to function as a government — from water mains to computer servers to student transcripts.

The World Bank today will estimate damage to Palestinian areas of the West Bank at $200 million to $300 million, USA TODAY has learned. The estimate is to be presented at a meeting of aid donors in Oslo, Norway. It tallies damage from March 1, when Israel began ratcheting up retaliation against suspected terrorists.

Hardest hit has been the city of Nablus, where tanks, troops, bulldozers and aerial assaults have caused up to $100 million in damage. Jenin and Ramallah each are believe to have sustained more than $50 million in damage.

Israelis say the wreckage was unavoidable because the foundations of Arafat’s fledgling Palestinian state are indistinguishable from the terrorist infrastructure Israel set out to destroy. “We tried to differentiate between the terrorists within the (Palestinian Authority) and the PA itself, but sometimes they are interconnected,” says Col.

Miri Eisin, an intelligence officer with the Israel Defense Forces. Israelis say the raids on Palestinian government offices turned up a bonanza of secret documents tying Arafat to terrorism and helped lead them to the men behind a wave of attacks on Israel.

The Israeli military says it has captured or killed 32 of the 50 highest-ranking Palestinian militants — including top figures in radical Hamas and Islamic Jihad — since the incursion began March 29. Israel’s top capture is Marwan Barghouti, West Bank chief of Arafat’s Fatah faction.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (folio-verified (the folio reads “USA TODAY · THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2002 · 9A”. 25 April 2002 was a Thursday. Paper and date both match one of Maria’s two labels for this slide — but ). Adjudicated confirmed against the printed page: Folio at the top right, above the heavy section rule: 'USA TODAY · THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2002 · 9A', with the section head 'World' centred below the rule. 25 April 2002 was a Thursday..

Context added by this archive

Zero uses of “Arab”. By April 2002 USA TODAY’s register for the West Bank is “Palestinian” without exception, and the people in the story are named, aged and quoted. Worth putting beside the 1997 Boston Globe clipping to show what the vocabulary looks like when the subject is Palestinians under occupation rather than Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship.

Cite this clipping

"Palestinians see cruelty, pettiness in damage," USA Today, 25 April 2002, p. 9A. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2002-123. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2002-123