Restrictions make life a struggle on West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank, Awad Massar and his wife, Randa, woke up Monday morning hemmed-in by Israeli forces and under a curfew that prohibited them from going outside.

But when Awad was discharged from the hospital in Ramallah early Monday after a series of heart tests on Sunday, all roads were blocked by the curfew.

So, under a scorching sun, they hiked through the rugged fields and mountains surrounding this scruffy town, skirting Israeli patrols and heading for any road not under curfew. They wanted to hitch a ride home to their refugee camp near Hebron, about 48 kilometers (30 miles) south.

"I'm tired,' said Awad, 48, looking fatigued after five hours of shuffling across rocky hills, his hospital bandages still covering fresh incisions in his arms and chest, a diagram of his failing heart under his arm.

Every time they came to an Israeli checkpoint, he would show them his hospital records and plead to pass, but they would wave him away, forcing him back into the countryside, he said.

With most of the West Bank reoccupied by Israeli forces and every major city but Hebron and Jericho under curfew, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians technically were confined to their homes Monday, as some have been since last Wednesday, when the Israeli government announced a new policy to capture and hold Palestinian territory in retaliation for terrorist attacks on Israelis.

In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli Apache helicopter gunships fired missiles at two taxis Monday morning in a "targeted assassination" that killed six people, including two high-ranking officials in the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. The main target of the attack was Yasser Razek, the head of the Hamas military wing in Rafah, a town on the border of Egypt.

He was described by Israeli security officials as a "ticking bomb" who was involved in several recent attempts to send suicide bombers into Israel.

Razek was responsible for an attack in January that killed four soldiers, security sources said. Another Hamas activist, identified as Amr Koufa, and two of Razek's brothers were also killed in the attack, the army said. In a reference to the helicopter attack, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday that Israel was "preparing to launch a massive operation in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas organization, the beginning of which we witnessed today." Speaking at a meeting of his party's Knesset members, Sharon said that in response to increased terrorist attacks on Israelis he would carry out "a number of measures against the territories, beginning with a massive incursion into the cities and remaining there indefinitely."