Hajj rejects requests of activists’ lawyers...(1)

Military Investigating Magistrate Abdullah Hajj rejected on Tuesday a request by the lawyers of two men suspected of concealing information about alleged contacts with the Jewish state.
Suleiman Lubbos, attorney for Salman Samaha, the head of the Lebanese Forces Students’ Committee, and Elias Eid, who is representing the activist Elie Keyrouz, requested the release of their clients on Monday.
Lubbos and Eid said their clients’ one-month detention was unjustifiable because the offense they are charged with had yet to be proven.

World: Morning attacks leave 7 Palestinians dead...(2)
“Israeli” troops supported by tanks and helicopter gunships entered the West Bank town of Jenin and two nearby Palestinian villages early Wednesday. Seven Palestinians, including three suspected Islamic militants, were killed by “Israeli” fire, according to Palestinian security officials.

Under heavy Palestinian fire, troops demolished three buildings a police station and two homes of Islamic militants - before withdrawing at daybreak.

In a separate incident Wednesday, a Palestinian man was killed and three people were wounded when “Israeli” troops fired toward a Palestinian taxi in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials said. The army said it was checking the report.

The incursions into Jenin and the villages of Tamoun and Arrabeh just to the south followed a day of violence Tuesday in which three other Palestinians were killed, two in exchanges of gunfire in Jenin and the other in the Gaza Strip.

The city's deputy governor, Haider al-Shae, said “Israeli” tanks entered the headquarters of the local security services, and bulldozers tore down a two-story building before pulling out.

In exchanges of fire between gunmen and the “Israeli” forces, a member of the militant Hamas group was killed by a tank shell, Palestinians said. At least six others were wounded, three seriously.

“Israeli” tanks also entered Arrabeh and shelled a home where two members of the militant Islamic Jihad group were hiding, witnesses said. The two men were killed, along with the homeowner's 11-year-old sister, Palestinian security officials said.

In a third incursion, “Israeli” forces entered Tamoun and destroyed the house of a suspected militant who had been killed in a targeted attack in July, Palestinian security said. In ensuing fire and as they withdrew, “Israeli” tanks destroyed an empty building and an “Israeli” helicopter fired at a car, injuring five passengers, the Palestinians said.

Also Wednesday, troops in an “Israeli” helicopter fired from machine guns at a convoy of Palestinian security officials in the area, said Jamal Daraghmeh, an regional leader of Arafat's Fatah movement. Three men were killed on the spot, and nine were injured, Daraghmeh said.

The army confirmed the incursions into Tamoun and Arrabeh, but had no immediate comment on the attack on the Palestinian convoy.

The incursion into Jenin was the second in a month. On Aug. 14, after a previous wave of bombings the “Israelis” said originated in the town of 50,000 in the northern West Bank, “Israeli” tanks and bulldozers entered the town after midnight and tore down a police headquarters building before withdrawing.

“Israel” has sent tanks into Palestinian areas several times during a year of conflict. Last month, “Israeli” forces held the town of Beit Jalla, across from Al-Quds, for 36 hours in an attempt to halt Palestinian gunfire at a Jewish neighborhood.

Under interim peace accords, Palestinians have limited control over about 40 percent of the West Bank, including civilian control in towns and cities.

West Bank territory is besieged by “Israelis”...(3)

Palestinian fighters in the besieged West Bank city of Jenin have vowed to use "dozens" of suicide (martyrdom)bombers against the “Israeli” army if its encircling troops advance further. “Israeli” tanks rolled into the outskirts of the Palestinian-ruled city of Jenin and encircled it yesterday in a siege the “Israeli” government said was to prevent suicide (martyrdom)bombers reaching “Israel”.

The advance, well inside the 1967 Green Line into Palestinian-controlled territory, helped to snuff out any chance of “Israeli”-Palestinian truce talks, which have been the subject of speculation for days.

In Jenin, calls for resistance rang out from loudspeakers on mosque minarets as the tanks rumbled in. Now it looks a city under siege. The streets were deserted. The shops were closed and boarded. Pathetic street barricades of rubble and rubbish bins have been hastily thrown up but they will be swept aside in seconds if the “Israelis” advance. Few cars and few people were moving. Most of the people were fighters, some masked. At one end of the town, gunmen flitted from one building to another, shooting sporadically at an “Israeli” tank that had drawn up to its edge. In the entrance to a nearby mosque, soldiers from the Palestinian National Security forces slept, after what they said was a night of fighting the advancing “Israelis”. Once the “Israelis” cross into Palestinian areas, the PNS troops openly admit fighting alongside the forces of the Tanzim paramilitaries, and co-ordinating their operations.

The “Israeli” army did not say how long it would stay. But the government denounced the city as a "hornets' nest" of opposition, and a breeding ground for guerrillas, producing at least six suicide (martyrdom)bombers since the start of the intifada. The raid was triggered by Sunday's suicide (martyrdom)bombing by a middle-aged “Israeli” Arab from the Galilee, believed to have been trained by Hamas in Jenin. He killed three “Israelis”.

"Terror was pouring out of the city of Jenin," said Gideon Meir, of the “Israeli” Foreign Ministry. "Most of the suicide (martyrdom)bombers came out of Jenin. “Israeli” forces last night surrounded Jenin to stop the terrorists coming out of the city."

In Jenin, among the most radical centres of anti-”Israeli” sentiment in the occupied territories, these declarations were greeted with pride. "Of course, it's true", said Mohammed, a 34-year-old Tanzim fighter, who is also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was dismissive of the possibility of talks between Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, the “Israeli” Foreign Minister. "It is nonsense. It's a myth. You can't have Jenin under siege and talk about negotiations over a truce."

The “Israeli” government issued a list of militant activists from Jenin it accused of attacks, naming two from Islamic Jihad, one from Hamas and one from the mainstream Fatah. One of these, a young bearded Fatah man called Abdel Karim Awes, 30, was easily found in the Jenin refugee camp, surrounded by three armed fighters. Although he denied any involvement in attacks on “Israel” ­ which attempted to assassinate him in May with a helicopter strike ­ he said the city was ready to defend itself, pitting suicide (martyrdom)bombers against tanks if necessary. Other paramilitaries on the streets made the same threat.

In 11 months of bloodshed more than 700 people have died, most of them Palestinians and Arabs.

Footnotes:

1-      The Daily Star, 12-9-2001.

2-      Associated Press, 12-9-2001.

3-      Independent, 12-9-2001.