West Bank: A landscape of devastation

JERUSALEM -- Thirteen days ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent Israeli forces into the West Bank to "uproot the infrastructure of terror." Since then, the uprooting inflicted by his tanks, bulldozers, helicopters and sappers has created a landscape of devastation from Bethlehem to Jenin.

The images are indelible: piles of concrete and twisted metal in the ancient casbah of Nablus, husks of savaged computers littering ministries in Ramallah, rows of storefronts sheared by passing tanks in Tulkarem, broken pipes gushing precious water, flattened cars in fields of shattered glass and garbage, electricity poles snapped like twigs, tilting walls where homes used to stand, gaping holes where rockets pierced office buildings.

Yesterday, on the day after 13 Israeli soldiers were killed going house to house in the crowded refugee camp of Jenin, the D-9 bulldozer was sent in instead, erasing whole stretches of tightly packed concrete houses.

There is no way to assess the full extent of the latest damage to the cities and towns -- Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tulkarem, Kalkilya, Nablus and Jenin -- while they remain under a tight siege, with patrols and snipers firing in the streets.

But it is safe to say that the infrastructure of life itself and of any future Palestinian state -- roads, schools, electricity pylons, water pipes, telephone lines -- has been devastated.