Sat, Jun 04, 2005 page6

• Israeli troops tell of revenge attacks

  `ADVANCE STORM' Two soldiers gave testimony to an organization that documents abuses by the Israeli army, saying they were ordered to attack unarmed Palestinians

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  Two Israeli soldiers on Thursday claimed they were ordered to carry out a series of revenge attacks on Palestinian policemen after the killing of six soldiers by militants.

  For the first allegation of its kind, the unnamed soldiers gave testimony to Breaking the Silence, an organization of former soldiers dedicated to gathering evidence of abuses by the Israeli army.

  One soldier, from the Yael reconnaissance unit, described a "crazy blood revenge rush" on the day of the attacks three years ago.

  

  Palestinian demonstrators take cover from rubber bullets fired by Israeli troops, not seen, during a protest against the construction of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Beit Surik on Thursday. Two security guards who were guarding the construction site were injured by stones, sources said.

  PHOTO: AP

  The Israeli army issued a statement later on Thursday which did not deny the soldiers' account, saying: "It was decided that the IDF [the army] will hunt down all those involved in terror activities, including members of the PA [Palestinian Authority] security apparatus."

  The killings began on Feb. 19, 2002 when gunmen from the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade attacked an Israeli checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah, killing six out of the seven soldiers at the checkpoint.

  "They attack and we defend. In the past we attacked and they defended. We need to return to that," Gideon Ezra, the internal security minister, said at the time:

  According to the soldier from the Yael unit, "we were going to kill six Palestinian policemen somewhere, revenging our six they took down."

  He was told there was a suspicion that the gunmen who had killed the Israeli soldiers had passed through a checkpoint manned by the Palestinian policemen.

  The Yael troops attacked a checkpoint at Deir as-Sudan, close to the Israeli settlement of Hallamish in the West Bank.

  "The idea was simply to kill them all. Whenever they arrived we would kill them, regardless whether armed or not," the soldier said.

  "It was ... really ... I really enjoyed it. It was the first time we were in an advance storm situation like in our training exercises. And we acted flawlessly. We performed superbly," he said.

  The wounded policeman escaped into a hut which the soldiers fired at, blowing up a gas cylinder and starting a blaze.

  A third tried to escape but was shot.

  According to the witness, none of the men they had attacked was armed.

  The second soldier, from the paratroop reconnaissance unit, also recalled orders given in the presence of his commanding officer, Brigadier Cochavi, in the early hours of Feb. 20.

  "The order called to approach three Palestinian checkpoints, manned by Palestinian police in the Nablus area, from what I remember: approach three positions, and shoot at the Palestinian police."

  The soldiers were told to kill Palestinian policemen at the checkpoints.

  The soldier said it was clear it was a revenge attack, adding that the targeted policemen had a good working relationship with the soldiers.

  It is not clear how many Palestinian policemen were killed. Media reports and Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group figures suggest 18 were killed in Gaza and the West Bank.
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