During a joint IDF-ISA operation in the Aida refugee camp in the Bethlehem district today (Monday), February 2, 2004, Bethlehem area Izadin al-Kassam leader Muhammad Abu Ouda was killed. According to intelligence assessments, Abu Ouda was behind last Thursday’s suicide attack in Jerusalem, in which 11 people were murdered and over 40 were wounded (the attack itself was perpetrated by Ali Jaara, a Palestinian policeman who resided in the camp).
Was he one of the people I saw last October, after I trudged through the garbage dump to get to the Palestinian cab waiting for us in Beit Jala, to go to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity? Not too many people on the streets, but he could have been one of them. Nope, didn’t see a lot of people there. I saw more posters of suicide bombers, I think, than of live people.
white pebble 