Three dozens of Palestinian fighters, the last holdouts in a weeklong battle with Israeli forces in the Jenin refugee camp, surrendered Thursday, one of their supporters said.
The group, including two local leaders, laid down their weapons at dawn and walked out of two buildings, said the supporter, known as Abu Sami, his nom de guerre. He is an activist in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat 's Fatah movement.
The Jenin camp was the scene of the deadliest fighting in Israel's two-week military offensive in the West Bank. Hundreds of armed men barricaded themselves in the camp, booby-trapping buildings and alleys.
Fighting wound down Wednesday after the remaining fighters said they had run out of ammunition. Several hundred camp residents surrendered Wednesday.
Among the last 36 who surrendered were two leaders — Ali Safouri of the Islamic Jihad group and Jamal Huweil, the regional leader of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia, Abu Sami told AP.
Following Tuesday's ambush, which left 14 Israeli soldiers dead in the Jenin camp, the occupation army adopted even more aggressive approach to its operation, with bulldozers employed since Tuesday night to demolish scores of homes in the camp. At the same time, additional forces were deployed in the area.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency deputy representative to the Palestinian territories, Karin Abu Ziyad, said Thursday that some 3,000 women and children in and around the Jenin refugee camp had been made homeless by the recent Israeli operation.
Meanwhile, Arab commentators hailed the firm resistance encountered by invading Israeli forces at Jenin refugee camp.
In the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, editor Abdelbari Atwan contrasted the "exemplary heroism and resistance" of the Jenin refugees with the way Arab capitals have been busy rolling out the red carpet for US Secretary of State Colin Powell and drawing up contingency plans to crush popular anti-Israel protests should they "go off script and threaten the ruling republican or royal families."
Imagine, Atwan wrote, if instead of sealing their borders, the Arab states had allowed the Palestinians to bring in weapons. What a battering the occupation army would have taken had "the heroes in Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Ramallah" been armed with anti-armor weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades.
"US President George W. Bush did not ask Sharon to stop the massacre out of American respect for friendly Arab regimes, but out of fear that the mass demonstrations in Arab capitals and towns could turn into popular revolutions that put an end to their subservience to the US and its ally Israel," Atwan added.
The leading Gulf newspaper Al-Khaleej said the resilience the Palestinians have shown in Jenin and elsewhere is their "testimony to history" that Israel's military power will never force the Palestinians to relinquish their inalienable rights.
The Sharjah-based newspaper credited Jenin's "legendary steadfastness" with having forced Bush to shift from endorsing Sharon's war to demanding that it be stopped; Powell to agree to meet with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat after earlier indicating he wouldn't; Sharon to withdraw his forces "if only for appearances' sake" from Tulkarem and Qalqilya; and even the Israeli Army - which has been systematically preventing ambulances from getting to wounded Palestinians - to request a truce so that it could evacuate its own dead and injured soldiers from Jenin refugee camp.
"This provides fresh, practical proof, written in the blood of martyrs, that steadfastness and struggle are the only way of recovering Palestinian and Arab rights," Al-Khaleej said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
