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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Israeli attack wounds News photographer
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
Adel Hana ©
AP
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The attack began Monday as I was interviewing Khalil Abu Shammala of the Al-Adameer human rights group in his Gaza office.
Only three blocks away, laser-guided missiles fired by Israeli F-16 jets began slamming into a Palestinian security compound in the heart of downtown Gaza City.
As we rushed to the scene I saw three F-16s, their silver fuselages glinting in the sun, circling high overhead. Now and then a puff of smoke would signal the incoming scream of yet another missile. In half an hour six missiles hit the Saraya compound, setting buildings ablaze and sending shrapnel skittering into nearby shops and apartment houses.
Throngs of terrified pedestrians, including children who had just been let out of school, ran for cover, some screaming in panic. Streets were quickly blocked off by Palestinian police to clear the road for ambulances carting off the wounded.
One of those wounded was Rocky Mountain News photographer George Kochaniec Jr., hit in both hands and a leg.
Limping and bleeding, he kept shooting pictures until an ambulance took him to hospital.
A policeman ordered me to leave the area. I told him I was "sahafi," an American journalist. He let me stay, yelling: "See what your American bombs are doing to us? Sharon is a maniac. Bush is a maniac."
Two fire engines arrived to douse a burning building that sent thick clouds of black smoke over the city. Another missile slammed in as firemen fought the blaze.
The compound had been hit before and was unoccupied. But it was guarded by Palestinian police and surrounded by thousands of passers-by in the world's most crowded city. Gaza's 1.2 million people are crammed into 365 square kilometers with a population density of more than 3,000 per square kilometer.
The attack came just after children had finished the morning shift at school and more were arriving for the afternoon shift. Hundreds of kids were on the streets when the airstrike began.
Outside the prison adjoining the security headquarters, a large crowd of Palestinians began demanding the release of Islamic militants jailed by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Some threw stones at officers who fired in the air to keep the crowd at bay.
I was told the prisoners were later released.
Electricity in Gaza City was cut after the airstrike and the telephone system went dead. Palestinians say it happens after every attack. So many people start calling each other to make sure their families are safe, the system becomes overloaded and simply breaks down.
This was the second airstrike on Gaza City in less than 24 hours. On Sunday night, a few hours after our arrival, F-16 jets flew over our hotel and fired two missiles into another police compound not far from a United Nations compound.
Apache helicopter gunships also fired missiles at a metal workshop in the nearby Jebaliya refugee camp, where the military said mortar shells and rockets were being made. The attack brought down the roof at a nearby kindergarten and sent 22 people to hospitals.
It also damaged the office of U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, injuring two U.N. guards. Israeli military commanders later apologized to him, but Roed-Larsen responded that it was "totally unacceptable to use this kind of weaponry, which puts civilian life and U.N. personnel at peril."
Israeli spokesmen said the first strike was in response to a terrorist attack in the southern town of Beersheba. Two Palestinians believed to be from Gaza sprayed automatic fire at Israelis sitting in a cafe and a nearby restaurant outside a military base, killing two women soldiers and seriously wounding five people before being shot dead by troops.
The second strike was retaliation for the Palestinians' first use of two long-range rockets, also fired from Gaza, which landed harmlessly in the fields of a communal farm in the Negev. The Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, which government spokesman Avi Pazner called "a very serious escalation."
Israeli officials regard the use of the Qassam-2 rockets, an upgraded 1 1/2-yard-long version of the shorter-range "Qassam," as an attempt by Palestinian militants to open a new, more dangerous phase in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. The Qassam-2 has a range of three to five miles, enough to hit Israeli towns from both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
After some of the missiles were found in the West Bank last week, Israeli officials warned the Palestinian Authority that their use would not be tolerated. But Arafat, confined to his Ramallah headquarters by Israeli tanks, has no control of what is going on in Gaza. And Hamas contends it has a right to acquire whatever weapons it can to combat the superior firepower of the Israeli army, which uses F-16s, Apache helicopters, tanks and laser-guided missiles in what it says is a war on terrorism.
More than 70 people were taken to Shifa Hospital after Monday's attack, including Kochaniec, who was treated for his wounds for several hours and later released.
While doctors worked on Kochaniec's wounds, Dr. Hasanein Muaeh, director of emergency medicine beseeched me to "tell America that American bombs have wounded an American."
What about all the Palestinian wounded, I ask.
"No one cares when Palestinians are wounded," he said. "Maybe they will care if an American is hurt."
February 12, 2002
Send your questions to international
editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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