Saturday, July 13, 2002

Journalist of Jenin's Despair Dies of Wound
Jenin's militants and Israel's military have made this city notorious as a place of death. But to Imad Abu Zahra, it was home, and as a journalist he struggled to express its history, its turbulent politics and its desperation.

Today, he died of a wound he suffered on Thursday, when he made his last effort to tell the world about life here by photographing Israeli tanks downtown.

Two other Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed today, by Israeli gunfire in the Gaza Strip, bringing to at least 36 the number of Palestinians killed since June 20, when Israel began seizing West Bank cities in response to back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem. Another death was reported though not confirmed.

At least 17 of those killed have been unarmed civilians, said the Israeli human rights group B'tselem.

The Israeli offensive in the West Bank, which has the tacit backing of the Bush administration, has succeeded so far in stopping suicide attacks in Israel. Cafes in Jerusalem — at least those that stayed open on the Jewish Sabbath — were jumping tonight, after weeks of fearful silence.

The price to Palestinians has been high, with hundreds of thousands of people who Israel acknowledges are innocent virtually prisoners in their homes, under 24-hour curfew and stringent travel restrictions.

Some have paid for the heightened military alert with their lives, including Randa al-Hindi, 45, and her 2-year-old daughter, Noor. Returning home from a relative's wedding, they were shot dead last Saturday as their truck, in a foggy dawn, approached Israeli Army outposts around the isolated Gaza settlement of Netzarim. The army at first denied that its troops had opened fire, then said they had fired warning shots after spotting suspicious people.

An army investigation found that soldiers had violated the army's firing regulations.…

The curfew had been temporarily lifted here on Thursday when Mr. Abu Zahra, 34, was shot. The Israeli Army said today that it was investigating.

The army said that on Thursday afternoon, two armored vehicles were moving through the downtown area when one hit a light pole and became stuck. A crowd gathered, and Palestinians threw firebombs and then opened fire, prompting the soldiers to fire back, the army said.

Witnesses here contradicted that account. Said Shawqi Dahla, a photographer for the official Palestinian news agency, was with Mr. Abu Zahra when they spotted the armored vehicle, about 150 feet down Salahadin Street. "We thought it was a good picture," he recalled from a hospital bed here.

With the curfew lifted, Palestinians were moving through the streets, Mr. Dahla said, but there had been no gunplay or other violence.

The two men began taking photographs, Mr. Dahla said. Both wore vests marked Press, though only Mr. Dahla's was bulletproof. One of the armored vehicles began shooting, he said. Mr. Dahla was shot in the left shin, Mr. Abu Zahra in the right thigh.

The large-caliber bullet that struck Mr. Abu Zahra had opened a grapefruit-size wound in his right thigh, destroying more than two inches of his femoral artery, said the surgeon who operated on him, Nihal Sawalha. "It was a very big wound," she said. "There was almost no blood in his body."

Mr. Abu Zahra's heart and breathing stopped as he arrived at the hospital, Dr. Sawalha said. She resuscitated and stabilized him. But this morning, after two heart attacks, he died.

Mr. Abu Zahra often called some foreign journalists he met in Jenin to update them on events here, in hopes of drawing attention to the city's plight and perhaps getting a little work. He telephoned one reporter last month to describe how Israeli soldiers had seized his father's house for a night, searching it and using it as their headquarters to question the neighbors in what he called "a kind of violence and humiliation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html

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