Word: sneineh
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer tells TIME that his country is bypassing Arafat as part of a strategy to strike direct cease-fire deals with local Palestinian power brokers. Last month in the divided city of Hebron, West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub agreed to keep order in the Abu Sneineh neighborhood in return for Israel's pulling out troops and tanks. Last week--just days before Israelis killed a leading Hamas military leader suspected of terrorism--Ben-Eliezer oversaw similar deals in the Palestinian cities of Tulkarem and Kalkilya...
...Israeli armored personnel carriers charged up the Hebron hill known as Abu Sneineh on Thursday, entering Palestinian-controlled territory and destroying two houses from which snipers had allegedly fired on Jewish settlers down below, seriously wounding an 11-year-old boy and lightly wounding his older brother. The incident, however, is a reminder why Hebron is a microcosm of today's West Bank - one that holds little comfort for anyone hoping for an early restoration of the collapsed peace process...
...settlers cheered, of course, as their army reentered Abu Sneineh. They'd been calling for its reoccupation since a ten-month-old baby girl was killed by Palestinian sniper fire earlier this year. But they were angry when the Israeli forces retreated after two hours, during which time they'd been under continuous light-arms fire from Palestinian security forces and gunmen from various militant political factions. The gunmen crowed that they'd forced the Israelis out; the Israeli army pooh-poohed that claim and said the operation was simply a warning that they could enter the area any time...
...Sneineh highlights one of the problems faced by the Israeli army in contemplating military solutions to the current uprising: The Israeli army learned, during the last intifada, that its troops are constantly vulnerable when deployed inside Palestinian urban areas. It was no coincidence that although Israel withdrew its troops from less than 40 percent of the West Bank and Gaza during the Oslo years, it was happy to include most Palestinian urban areas in the territory it handed over - better to have your troops and tanks surround the town than to be facing a potential ambush around every corner...
...gunmen atop Abu Sneineh will, no doubt, find new firing positions. And while they may from time to time hold their fire when they deem it politic, they'll keep on targeting the soldiers and settlers down below, in the belief that the Israelis will ultimately pack up and leave if the price of staying becomes too high. But the settlers, many of them from the far-right Kach movement, have no intention of going anywhere, nor would the current Israeli government even consider withdrawing them...