Violent memories Israel's West Bank conquest reminiscent of 196

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- All across the West Bank, scenes played out in this past week are like snapshots from other conflicts, older days: lines of Israeli battle tanks silhouetted against stony hills, Palestinian gunmen taking aim from windows and rooftops, the high keening wails of the newly bereaved.

Israel's conquest of all but two of the West Bank's principal cities and towns in an offensive that began before dawn on March 29 is reminiscent of its lighting capture of this territory from Jordan during the Six-Day War of 1967, when it also seized the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt.

That full-on occupation lasted nearly 30 years, until Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority gained control of the West Bank's major towns in the mid-1990s. This time, Israel suggests that its military takeover of almost all those same towns will last only a matter of weeks.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government insists it will press ahead with its hunt for illicit weapons and for Palestinian militants who exacted an unprecedented toll of Israeli civilian lives -- more than 60 in the month of March alone -- in a wave of horrific suicide attacks.

Close quarters

In the narrow streets and winding alleyways of half a dozen West Bank towns and their adjoining refugee camps, recent days have seen urban warfare of a scale, duration and intensity -- and a terrifying close-quarters intimacy -- not seen since the previous Palestinian uprising against Israel, lasting from late 1987 to 1993.

The power of Israeli battlefield weaponry being brought to bear in crowded Palestinian population centers -- tanks, antiaircraft guns, assault helicopters -- is far greater than that unleashed in the first intefadeh, and so is the resistance from Palestinian gunmen. The casualty rates reflect that; at least 73 Palestinians and 10 Israel soldiers have died in the nine-day offensive.

Palestinian towns seized by Israeli troops are locked down tight, with military curfews that are occasionally lifted for a few hours at a time. Even without orders to stay home, the crack of gunfire and the concussive roar of tank shells is enough to keep most people behind locked gates and tightly closed shutters.

"We are not used to this kind of war here -- we are in fear every minute," said Abed al-Rauf Okab, a 59-year-old Palestinian who lives near Arafat's besieged compound in Ramallah. His family is sleeping on mattresses in their living room.

Okab, who has four adult children living in Chicago, is old enough to remember the Israeli seizure of the West Bank in 1967, which he said was far less violent. "It was nothing compared to today," he said. Then, he recalled, Israeli soldiers shouted "Shalom" at Palestinian civilians from atop their tanks.

Military curfews and restrictions on civilians' movement are not uncommon in one part of the West Bank or another, particularly towns like Hebron, where Jewish settlers live in enclaves surrounded by Palestinians. But not for many years have so many Palestinian civilians scattered over such a wide area experienced such a thorough and simultaneous disruption of their daily lives.

Since this incursion began, Palestinian classrooms have sat empty. Businesses that Palestinian families spent years building up have been reduced to ruined shells.

Calls to prayer

Five times a day, the Muslim call to prayer echoes from mosques, but with worshippers trapped in their homes, it goes unanswered except in private. On Saturday, when it was time for noon prayers, a lone young Palestinian man stood in his window in the center of Ramallah and sang out Quranic verses to the alleyway below.

Palestinian doctors are just as pinned down as their patients, and none could come to the bedside of 23-year-old Lubna Mahmoud when she was ready to give birth early Friday. It was after midnight when her labor pains began, and going to the hospital was out of the question.

Her obstetrician gave her instructions over the telephone: sterilize some scissors to cut the umbilical cord, and be ready to clear the baby's nasal passages. Two hours later, she gave birth to a girl.

"I was really scared for the baby," Mahmoud said, cuddling the red-faced, spiky-haired infant she had named Rania.