Youth tells of playing dead to cheat Palestinian gunmen

JERUSALEM - Sixteen-year-old Alexander Briskin survived an attack by Palestinian gunmen by giving them what they wanted. He slumped over and played dead.

Briskin and 35-year-old Danny Yehuda were driving in the occupied West Bank road near their settlement of Homesh on Monday when a yellow taxi with green licence plates overtook their car, spitting gunfire.

"There was no one on the road but us and a Palestinian taxi," Briskin said by telephone from hospital. "They passed us and opened fire, shattering our back window. Then I heard another burst of fire and the car sort of jumped and stopped. I put my head down between my arms."

What he saw when he opened his eyes will haunt Briskin for a long time, he said.

"I saw the taxi coming back, and I saw [Danny] dead. I knew he was beyond help ... " said the teenager, whose back and throat were punctured by shrapnel.

As his assailants cruised slowly by, checking their handiwork, Briskin let his head loll sideways, showing his would-be killers his bloodied back.

"I played dead. I was afraid the terrorists were coming back to kill me," he said. "It was survival instinct. I think if I hadn't pretended I was dead they would have come and finished me off."

When they had gone he found a pistol belonging to Yehuda, put it in the window and started to look for a phone.

In the long minutes before help arrived, Briskin pointed the pistol out of the disabled car and tried to fire at two passing Palestinian taxis.

"I thought they were the terrorists and I tried to shoot them, but the safety was on," he said. "No one stopped."

Briskin, who emigrated from Ukraine in 1999 with his family, has had to acclimatise quickly to the law of the jungle that has ruled the West Bank since a Palestinian uprising for independence began in late September.

Palestinians see attacks on Jewish settlers living on West Bank and Gaza land Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war as legitimate resistance against occupation.

Settlers, often armed and protected by the Israeli Army, have also killed Palestinians during the conflict.

Carnage on West Bank roads has become routine despite a United States-brokered truce aimed at ending almost nine months of bloodshed.

Hours after Yehuda was killed, another settler was shot dead on a different West Bank road. Three Israelis and five Palestinians have died since the truce began on Wednesday last week.

After Monday's killing of the two settlers, Israel tightened the blockade around the autonomous Palestinian town of Tulkarem, where one of the attackers was believed to live.

Israel refused yesterday to accede to Palestinian demands for a complete end to the regional blockade, reports said. The demand had been made during a meeting of security specialists from both sides together with CIA staff.

Israel insisted at the Tel Aviv meeting that before the blockade could be lifted, the Palestinians must arrest militants involved in attacks on Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that the six-week "cooling off" period called for in the truce agreement would begin only after the violence stopped completely.

David Reuven, the chairman of Homesh, said four families from the settlement's 43 had left since the fighting began.

"I'm not surprised if a few people leave. I see it as legitimate, but ... in every settlement there is a strong basic core that is strengthened by such incidents," Reuven said, referring to religious Jews who believe they have a biblical right to live in the West Bank and Gaza.

Briskin, whose family moved in two years ago for the Government-subsidised low rents, no longer wants to be one of the 200,000 Jews living among three million Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory.

His mother and father have already decamped to their daughter's home in the coastal town of Ashdod, though they are not sure whether their finances will allow them to bid the West Bank goodbye forever.

"It is very difficult to return because our morale is very low. Yesterday it was Sasha and today it could be me or my husband," Alexander's mother Svetlana said.

"In any case, Sasha cannot return because of the horrific pictures before his eyes."

- REUTERS

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