Israelis Recall a Night of Death and Revenge

In the murky war between Israel and the Palestinians, the role of the Palestinian police was often complex and ambiguous. One of nine different security forces reporting to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the police had been set up, armed and trained following the 1993 Oslo peace accords to help Arafat's Palestinian Authority keep law and order in the West Bank and Gaza and assert control over rival militant groups. Members of the force wore green military uniforms and many carried automatic weapons.

In the days before the intifada, police officers carried out joint patrols with Israeli soldiers, shared intelligence and coordinated through district offices. But when the violence began, some policemen opened fire on Israelis or moonlighted as gunmen. Israeli officials repeatedly charged that the police were either failing in their duty to stop terrorist attacks or in some cases aiding the attacks. "In general, Israelis viewed the Palestinian police as complicit in terror," said Michael Oren, an Israeli military historian and analyst.

Mahmoud Aloul, the Palestinian governor of the Nablus district where some of the police outposts targeted in February 2002 were located, recalled that his men were caught by surprise. "The targets they chose are security positions that were established in agreement with Israel," he said. "They were not positions of war."

Aloul insisted that the policemen who were killed had nothing to do with Ein Arik or any other attack on Israelis. Three of the four police checkpoints hit that night were at least 20 miles from Ein Arik. The Palestinian gunmen responsible for the attack have never been identified, and the army has never asserted that any of the policemen were directly involved.

The soldiers say that until the Ein Arik attack they were instructed to treat the police as noncombatants. "Every time we had an operation near a police post we were told, 'Don't shoot a policeman,' " said the paratrooper. "They weren't friends, but they weren't enemies. Sometimes even before an operation, one of the officers would go to the DCO [District Coordinating Office] and ask them to inform the police. They just changed the rules completely that night."

At the time, however, the soldiers recalled, they were delighted with their new orders. "We were all very excited," said the engineer who would not allow his name to be used. "For all of us it was the first sexy mission. You put a cross on your gun if you kill a terrorist, and none of us had a cross."

There were no maps of the target, just one fuzzy photograph. The army officer drew up a plan of attack on pieces of cardboard. Within minutes the soldiers set off.

There were two separate operations against police posts that night. The Yael team was dispatched to a checkpoint outside the village of Deir Sudan, located in a narrow valley north of Ramallah. Five snipers set up a position on a hillside while the other men came down the hill and set up behind a stone wall. The checkpoint was shut down for the night -- the policemen were asleep in a nearby house -- and the soldiers sat for at least three hours. Then just before dawn, a half-dozen men began emerging, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, some carrying weapons while others were unarmed.

The snipers fired first but failed to hit any of the policemen. Then Levi and his men emerged from behind the wall and opened fire. The policemen, caught by surprise, never fired back. Most managed to flee, but two were killed.

One of Levi's men hit a policeman a few yards away. "He said, 'Wow, I hit him.' " Levi recalled. "He was happy like a kid."

His fellow combat engineer recalled a similar feeling of elation.

"This is what we dreamed of, being the sexiest warrior," he said.