The death of Mohammed al-Juri, a 17-year-old Palestinian schoolboy and gunman, came as no surprise to his family. He was killed at Beit Lahia, on the Gaza-Israeli border, during the biggest battle between Israelis and Palestinians since last month’s assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
”We felt he was determined to be a martyr,” his brother Ghassan said.
The gun battles of the past few days have injured one Israeli officer, killed 14 Palestinians, and wounded a further 45.
Juri, a member of Islamic Jihad, was killed by an Israeli bullet as he went to help pull away the dead body of a fighter from the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.
At the top the rivalry between Arafat and the Islamist groups, especially Hamas, is a fight for political survival. But on the ground in Gaza the factions have abandoned their differences and are fighting together. The gunmen say the level of cooperation has increased in the past month since the assassinations of the two Hamas leaders, Sheik Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi.
A Democratic Front fighter, hiding behind an iron fence, pointed to the various groups: ”That is the proof of unity among the military factions,” he said.
Despite belonging to a left-wing secular organisation, he is sympathetic to Hamas, the dominant Islamist group. ”We are all ready to die,” he said. ”The deaths of Sheik Yassin and Dr Rantissi have motivated us to fight even harder and revenge their deaths.”
At the height of the battle dozens of masked Palestinian gunmen were queuing up on a street corner to join the fighting. The different factions were recognisable only by their headbands: the green of Hamas, the black and white of Islamic Jihad, and the red stars of the two smaller groups, the Popular Front and the Democratic Front. They were joined by unmasked freelance civilians who brought along their own guns.
The mood of those going into battle was high-spirited, even though they were heavily outgunned by the Israelis.
An Israeli army spokesperson said on Thursday that the incursion had been intended ”to smoke out” the Hamas members who have been firing Qassam rockets from Beit Lahia into Israel since Sunday, the day after Rantissi’s was killed. The Israeli tanks and soldiers were dug into dunes and buildings at the far end of the street. The Palestinians fired mainly Kalashnikovs, grenades and the occasional rocket. The Israelis responded with tank and sniper fire.
Helicopter gunships fired heavy cannon at the Palestinian fighters. F-16 fighter planes flew overhead.
During the fighting, behind a screen of tanks and soldiers, Israeli bulldozers destroyed, apparently as a punitive action, a sewage works built for the Palestinians by the Swedish international development agency. An hour before leaving on Thursday morning the Israeli army blew up a police training centre and a newly completed — but never used — school for disabled children.
In spite of the casualties and the destruction at Beit Lahia, and the various setbacks of the past few weeks, including George Bush’s abrupt switch in Middle East policy, the Palestinian fighters are convinced that they are winning. They see Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull out the Israeli forces and settlers as a victory. But speaking in Gaza City, Ahmed Bahar, one of the Hamas leaders on the Israeli hitlist, said the pullout from Gaza would not end the fighting.
If the Israeli army remained, as it planned to do, along the Gaza-Egyptian border, Hamas would fight them there. ”We will not throw away our weapons,” he said. ”Jerusalem is still occupied, Haifa is still occupied. They took our land by force and we have the right to take it back by force.”
Professor Bahar, an Arabic expert at the Islamic University in Gaza City, said Hamas was still planning revenge for the Yassin’s death. ”Retaliation is coming. It is just a matter of time,” he said, adding that it would be in Israel and not overseas, as some have suggested.
Hamas has been on the rise in Gaza since soon after the intifada began in September 2000. Bahar said it would cooperate temporarily with Arafat’s Palestinian Authority after the pullout, but he expected elections soon after that: his unspoken assumption was that Hamas would win them.
The extent to which Arafat’s authority has declined in Gaza was brought home late on Tuesday night at Gaza central jail. Four men arrested for the killing last October of three US security men whose car was destroyed by a roadside bomb in Gaza were due for release, for lack of evidence.
Arafat issued an order that they were not to be released. The police were coy about the details on Thursday, but late on Tuesday night armed men from one of the factions turned up at the jail, fired into the air and demanded their release. The police let them go.
During the battle of Beit Lahia a group of ambulances stood by close to the fighting. Of the 14 dead, only three were fighters; the others were civilians, mainly children and teenager. One was only 12.
Asked for an explanation, an ambulance driver, Salah Morjaja, said: ”Look around. Boys.”
Hundreds of children and teenagers sat on the pavements or gathered at corners to watch the fighting. Many see the fighters as heroes, and when they are a little older plan to join their ranks, if the conflict is still going on. – Guardian Unlimited Â