Israeli army brings in special squads

PHIL REEVES reports on a 'smart' offensive as damning statistics reveal the scale of killings by Israeli soldiers.

JERUSALEM - After bombarding Palestinian towns with missiles from tanks and combat helicopters, shooting dead a host of civilians and flattening apartment blocks and orchards, Israel's Army says it now plans to go on the offensive and "take the initiative" against Tanzim gunmen.

The tactic was announced by Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh and came as two human rights groups published damning statistics showing the scale of the killings committed by Israeli soldiers during the month-long intifada, or uprising.

Israel's armed forces plan to use special squads trained in counter-guerrilla operations against the Tanzim, the armed militia of Fatah, and other gunmen in the occupied territories who have been firing at Israeli Army positions and at Jewish settlements.

Sneh said the squads would be "effective and smart" and "no innocent civilian will be killed."

His words - underscoring a similar threat from Israel's armed forces chief of staff, General Shaul Mofaz - failed to reassure the Palestinians, who recall Israel's repeated use of undercover assassination squads. Saeb Erekat, a former Oslo negotiator for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said the development was "really threatening and a real sign of escalation."

The conflict is increasingly taking on the appearance of a low-level war with a strong undercurrent of sectarian killings motivated by revenge and ethnic hatred. The latter took a nasty new twist yesterday, surfacing this time - to the alarm of Israelis - in Jerusalem itself.

A gunman, believed to be Palestinian, shot dead an Israeli security guard with a bullet to the head outside the National Insurance Institute in the city's eastern Arab sector. A second guard was badly injured.

The outrage in Israel at these deaths was compounded by the news that the bound, stabbed body of an Israeli man had been found near the Jewish settlement of Gilo on the edge of south Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian guard from a Jerusalem hospital was being treated after being shot by a man thought to be a Jewish settler.

With no prospect of a successful ceasefire - the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement was still-born - the signs are that the sectarian bloodletting will only increase, with tit-for-tat lynchings.

But the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the killings in the past month has been done by Israeli soldiers, using M-16s, steel-coated rubber bullets, and high-powered sniper's rifles.

Yesterday, Btselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, said 95 Palestinian civilians had now been killed by the Israeli security forces, plus a further 14 security men and 13 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.

An analysis of the injuries of the dead by Palestinian doctors - working with American Physicians for Human Rights - has found that almost half of the dead were shot in the head or neck, several from the back, while the other half were shot in the chest or stomach.

"This is a very clear indicator that the Israeli Army is shooting to kill," said Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, president of the Union of Palestinian Medicial Relief Committees (UPMRC). "They decide which of the demonstrators they want to kill and then they act as assassins."

The analysis also found that nine out of 10 were killed by live ammunition.

But the steel-coated rubber bullets used by the Israeli Army could be just as lethal if fired at the head, as they create a track through the brain tissue and are impossible to extract without causing further injury.

The UPMRC says 17 people have lost an eye to rubber bullets and 1000 Palestinians are permanently disabled because of their injuries.

"We need international protection," said Barghouthi. "We are facing a very dangerous situation that could become another Kosovo, with thousands of people dead."

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