SUZANNE GOLDENBERG, Nablus | Friday
The fight went out of al-Ayn refugee camp at dawn and the men came out with their hands in the air after a punishing Israeli bombardment forced them to the cruellest of choices: death or surrender.
It’s not that we are scared to fight, but we have nothing to defend ourselves with,” said Abdullah Issa (43). We don’t have guns, but if we were armed, nobody would have come out.”
Hundreds of men in al-Ayn camp reached the same conclusion on Wednesday after the most intensive assault on the camp since Israeli forces entered Nablus: five straight hours under the percussive beat of tank fire and the hiss and thunder of missiles fired from helicopter gunships.
And so the last centres of Palestinian resistance to a relentless assault by the Israeli army on West Bank towns flickered and died, after 13 days, in the refugee camps of Nablus and Jenin.
In Jenin, the refugee camp where the bloodiest battles of the last days were fought, as many as 200 Palestinian fighters were also reported to have surrendered on Wednesday. But dozens of their comrades were believed dead and doctors spoke of as many as 200 casualties.
In Salem convoys of tractors and trucks rumbled down through the olive groves with mattresses, blankets and food for some 600 men dumped outside the camp after their capture and interrogation by the Israeli forces.
The battle is over. There are a large number of martyrs. Many have been arrested. The Israelis are in total control and there is no more fighting,” said Jamal Abu al-Haija, a Hamas leader.
In Nablus at least 50 Palestinians are reliably reported to have been killed. Medics have retrieved the corpses of 14 people from the old city, or casbah, signalling the end of the battle.
The surrenders were sweet revenge for Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who courted world opprobrium for nearly two weeks for what he claims is a war on terror. On Tuesday alone 14 Israeli soldiers were killed in the camp, and when the call for surrender boomed out over the loudspeakers, the people of al-Ayn were terrified the army would avenge their loss on them.
By morning, there was even more cause for Israel to seek vengeance a suicide bombing in the Israeli coastal city of Haifa a last act of defiance from what was once the stronghold of Palestinian militants in Jenin.
But in al-Ayn that particular piece of news came more as consolation.
Thank God. We hope these operations can continue,” said Ahmed Attalah (15). These are reactions to actions by the Israelis. If there were no actions by the Israelis these would not happen.
On Wednesday the army claimed to have killed one of the master dispatchers of suicide bombers from the Jenin refugee camp Mohammed Tuwalbeh, the local commander of the Islamic Jihad. Israel accuses him of engineering 10 suicide bombing attacks inside Israel. There was no confirmation from Palestinian sources.
The real toll in Palestinian deaths and destruction can only be guessed at. What seems certain is that the killing will not stop with Tuwalbeh, or the Haifa suicide attack. It will go on and on.
On a nearby kerb, Issa’s son Said (9) waited and watched with the other children, soaking up the scene of their fathers’ humiliation. A few of the children strutted up to the concertina wire hoping to be considered big enough to surrender as well, but were swatted back by their fathers or turned aside with a swift swivel of a gun from the Israeli soldiers.
The children did not seem agitated by the scene. In al-Ayn children have grown up fast during these past 18 months. After the bombardments of the last days, even children as young as Said are weapons experts. He explained: Stun grenades have a very loud noise, tear gas canisters make you cry, but the real bombs burn and you can smell their smoke.”
He also nurses a very adult hatred of Israel. Issa said he had to prise a stone from his son’s fist to prevent him hurling it at the Israeli soldiers, and Said is already practised in the rhetoric of militancy. He says that he will be a suicide bomber when he grows up, or possibly a doctor.
We are never going to surrender, not for good, no matter what they do to us,” said Said.