Villagers Trapped as Israelis Vow to Stay ‘as Long as It Takes’

BEIT JALA, West Bank — Israeli tanks crunched up and down Virgin Mary Street on Tuesday, enforcing a predawn military occupation here that trapped hundreds of Palestinians in their homes and 45 children in a Lutheran-run orphanage.

Israel said it seized portions of the West Bank village of Beit Jala, in the most far-reaching takeover of Palestinian land in years, to wipe out a “snipers nest” shooting at the nearby Jewish neighborhood of Gilo.

“We will stay there as long as it takes,” Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank, told reporters. Yitzhak said Israeli forces were being careful to respect the sensitivities of the largely Christian village’s population and that troops did not occupy religious sites or inhabited buildings.

But try telling that to the people of Beit Jala.

After sweeping into town in the dead of night, Israeli forces set up firing positions on the top floor of a building in the Lutheran compound, which is dominated by the white-steepled Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Reformation. The orphanage is part of the complex.

Khaled Musalem, director of the orphanage, heard the roar of Israeli tanks in the midnight darkness. Quickly, he rounded up the 45 boys in his care and hid them in the basement.

The soldiers arrived and banged on the building’s doors, demanding entry. Musalem said he opened the door and that the troops then demanded and took a key to the church.

That was about 1:30 Tuesday morning. By the afternoon, Musalem and four staff members remained trapped inside the orphanage and were struggling to keep the boys’ spirits up, distract them from the periodic shooting and scrounge up enough food.

“We tried to ask the soldiers’ permission to leave to get some supplies, but they wouldn’t let us,” Musalem said. “At the beginning, the younger kids cried, but we managed to calm them down.”

Musalem accused the Israelis of using the boys, ages 6 to 17, as human shields: Their presence theoretically would discourage Palestinian gunmen from firing on the Israeli positions.

“They knew the kids could be protection,” he said. “They will hide behind the kids.”

An Israeli army spokesman denied that, saying the children and all civilians in Beit Jala were staying in their homes because the military, while conducting its operations, had imposed a round-the-clock curfew. “It’s best for civilians not to be out,” he said.

Journalists attempting to reach the orphanage were driven back amid gunfire from Israeli and Palestinian positions. Musalem and others inside the Lutheran compound were interviewed by telephone.

One of the boys, 10-year-old Milad Zaidalah, said he was scared but passing the time playing and watching television. “Every time there’s more shooting, we stop playing,” he said in a squeaky voice.

The boys, half of them Christian, half Muslim, some orphans and some simply too poor to live at home, were sustaining themselves with rice and beans. After pleas to European diplomats made by the Lutheran bishop in Jerusalem, Munib Younan, Israel allowed a three-day supply of canned meat, milk, pasta and bread to be delivered to the compound.

“We want to make clear that no shooting has taken place, neither yesterday nor in the past, from our church buildings in Beit Jala,” Younan said in a statement demanding that the troops withdraw from his church buildings.

The Israeli firing positions were placed in three windows, sandbagged and covered in camouflage netting, on a top floor of the Lutheran building, which is still under construction. The Israelis appeared to be hunkering down for an indefinite stay, the first time Israel has reoccupied a Palestinian town since the advent of the 1993 Oslo peace process.

In Washington, the State Department urged Israel to withdraw from Beit Jala and expressed special concern about the orphanage.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said U.S. officials were “troubled by reports that Israel has posted troops next to an orphanage” and want Israel to “avoid any action that would jeopardize the safety of the children.”

The Israelis “need to understand that incursions like this won’t solve the security problems,” Boucher said. “They only make matters worse.” At the same time, Palestinians need to cease their attacks on Gilo and elsewhere, he said.

The Israeli army said the buildings occupied in Beit Jala had been used by Palestinian gunmen firing on Gilo or provided a good vantage over Palestinian positions.

About 30 soldiers seized the home of Spanish-born Fadua Margarita Hodali-Medina and her Palestinian husband, Bashir Kharoufeh. They live next door to the Orthodox Christian Club, a site that Israel says Palestinian gunmen have frequently used as a firing position.

The soldiers entered the home just before midnight and ordered the 46-year-old Hodali-Medina, her husband and a visiting neighbor into a single room of the two-story home. Reached Tuesday evening by telephone, Hodali-Medina said she had not been allowed to leave.

“They will let me go to the bathroom or to the kitchen, but that’s it,” she said. “They have us in a room where they can watch us. In my own house, I can’t even go onto the veranda.”

The streets of Beit Jala were virtually deserted Tuesday, many marked with the gigantic white chicken scratches of tank tracks. Residents peeked out of their windows from time to time, and a few ventured onto doorsteps to speak to reporters or ask for help. A handful of armed Palestinians, some uniformed and some in civilian clothes, were posted in alleys or hung back at street corners.

Bashir Rabia, 49, inspected the crumpled hulk of his blue Chrysler, parked on the street. An Israeli tank ran into it going one direction, then hit it again on its way back.

“Last night was terrifying,” he said. “They did not shoot at people or at houses but in the air, to scare people.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the invasion on the heels of Israel’s assassination of a senior Palestinian leader and after the dead man’s supporters opened fire on Gilo. Israel considers the Jewish neighborhood, built on West Bank land captured in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed, to be part of Jerusalem.

Earlier this month, Sharon, struggling to contain Israeli-Palestinian violence, vowed that not a single bullet would ever again be allowed to be fired on Gilo unanswered.

“We cannot let our capital be attacked not once, not twice but dozens of times,” said Sharon advisor Dore Gold. Palestinian gunmen loyal to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat repeatedly have used Beit Jala as a staging ground to shoot at Gilo.

Residents of the Jewish neighborhood said Tuesday that they were pleased the army had finally moved into Beit Jala. But they demanded that more be done.

“What the army has to do is take out a whole row of houses,” said resident Eli Luzon.

“We want the army to go in there and stay,” added Eli Amar.

Both were among many Gilo residents speaking to Israeli television or holding news conferences Tuesday to celebrate the Beit Jala action.

Late Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen fired three mortar shells at Gilo, hitting an empty kindergarten and community center. No one was injured. And there were heavy exchanges of gunfire off and on throughout much of the day, especially between Israeli forces and Palestinians in a nearby Bethlehem refugee camp.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians filed through the streets of the West Bank city of Ramallah to bury Mustafa Zibri, the radical political leader killed by Israel on Monday. It was one of the largest such outpourings in a long time, with rival factions closing ranks in the cries for revenge.

Mourners, some masked and firing automatic rifles, heaped as much anger on the United States as on the Jewish state.

Israel’s combination of two controversial tactics--targeted slayings and incursions--and the likelihood of even more serious Palestinian reprisals suggested to many people in the region that the 11-month-old uprising is growing increasingly unmanageable.

“Every day, every hour, the conflict gets worse and deteriorates,” Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid of the leftist Meretz Party wrote in the Maariv newspaper Tuesday.