Friday, February 21, 2003

"Our demand is not to remove a checkpoint outside Nablus," he said. "We want political independence. That's why the intifada began."


Armed With Weapons and a Will, Palestinian Factions Plot Revenge
Over sugary coffee and hot mincemeat sandwiches, the young men gathered here to plot revenge.

They were all in their 20's, an age that might lead such a group to talk about soccer or romance. But as Israeli forces once again scoured the casbah for militants, representatives of the "military wings" of several main Palestinian factions relaxed on overstuffed sofas in a living room elsewhere in the city to talk strategy, politics and death.

Each of the seven men had a pistol at his belt and a mobile phone close at hand, in case their lieutenants outside spotted soldiers. One had had to make an escape from here over the rooftops before; the walls of the hallway downstairs were pitted with bullet holes from that unwelcome Israeli visit.

"If anything happens," one of them said, holding up his gun, "we're not going to be arrested."

Viewed from Israel or abroad, the Palestinian factions can present a crimson continuum of violent means and aims. But although more than two years of conflict and a shared nationalist impulse have blurred the distinctions, divisions of ideology endure — even in Nablus, which Israel calls the center for terrorism in the West Bank.

Even the cellphones of these men mapped their varying politics. The liquid crystal display on the phone of a bearded representative of Hamas showed a picture of Osama bin Laden beside an image of the Twin Towers. The representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group with Marxist roots, displayed a picture of Ché Guevara and a single English word: freedom. A leader of the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group of Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction, had chosen a picture of a semiautomatic rifle.

But all these men presented themselves as backed into a corner by the Israelis and compelled to fight together. "We're not occupying Nablus — they are," said a member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades. "We're pushed to do this. We don't like blood, but we have no other choice."

Israel says it has had no choice but to occupy Nablus to protect its citizens from men like these.

Another member of Al Aksa, a leader who is 28 and gave only a nom de guerre, Abu Mujahid, met last week with Hani al-Hasan, the interior minister of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Hasan spent several days in Nablus trying to calm things down.

Mr. Hasan is a veteran of Fatah, but his credentials meant so little even to the Fatah militants here that one offshoot of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades issued a threat on his life for promoting a limited cease-fire.

The two Hamas representatives at the meeting today — who sat side by side, smoking or fingering prayer beads — had no interest in sitting down with the Fatah leader.

"How can we meet Hani al-Hasan when there are political prisoners in Palestinian jails?" asked one of them, who gave his age as 26. Officials of the Palestinian Authority, he said, "are thinking of their own interests, not the Palestinian people's interests."

He added: "Stop resistance? Stop resistance for what? The Authority is not able to offer us anything yet."

Israel has offered to ease restrictions and withdraw its forces from areas where Palestinians achieve calm. But like the man from Hamas, the member of the Popular Front here, who is 25, scoffed at the idea that the proposal should limit the intifada, or the Palestinian uprising.

"Our demand is not to remove a checkpoint outside Nablus," he said. "We want political independence. That's why the intifada began."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/21/international/middleeast/21MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

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