Mrad claims some Lebanese are working for “Israel”…(1)

Education Minister Abdel-Rahim Mrad said Wednesday that “Israel” had enlisted hundreds of Lebanese to destabilize the country.
Speaking in Abbassieh, a small town near Tyre, Mrad said that “the enemy is still trying to steal our water resources and has enlisted hundreds of people to infiltrate our ranks.”
The minister said that “people who are advancing “Israel’s” cause in our camp must be still gambling on “Israel”” changing the status quo in Lebanon, he said.
Mrad said “the resistance in the South will continue until the liberation of the Shibaa farms is achieved.”
The minister added that Lebanon has returned, thanks to its anti-”Israeli” resistance, to the Arab fold and is now at the heart of the Arab-”Israeli” conflict.

New website for Khiam Center…(2)

The Follow-up Committee for the Support of Lebanese Detainees in “Israeli” Prisons announced Wednesday the opening of a new website for the Khiam Rehabilitation Center.
The website, www.khiamcenter.org, contains information on the center, testimonies of former detainees and studies on both the situation of former detainees and the importance of rehabilitation.
The website also contains reports on torture, prisoners’ rights and the center’s health, cultural and media activities.
Users will also be able to access information about other rehabilitation centers.
The website condemns torture in “Israeli” prisons and all other prisons around the world.
It is also a call for developing the international campaign against torture and punishing its perpetrators.
The website welcomes any contributions and research on torture and the rehabilitation of victims of torture.
The center may be reached at the following e-mails: krc@khiamcenter.org, khiam_center@hotmail.com

10 Palestinian Martyrs, 100 Wounded in More “Israeli” Atrocities…(3)
The “Israeli” occupation is trying to abuse the world’s being busy with the American event to continue its terrorism in the killing, destruction, and penetration of Palestinians territories, which increased the number of martyrs to 10 in the Palestinian ruled West Bank town of Jenin and in the neighboring villages. A 100 others were wounded by bullets of the “Israeli” enemy army which again penetrated into the town encircled since two days. Occupation forces invaded the Palestinian controlled West Bank town of Jenin and which is still encircled by tens of “Israeli” military armored vehicles. “Israeli” tanks opened its gunfire on civilians and killed 6 Palestinians. Among those assassinated are Tawfiq Jaber Bin Zayd ,the head of Palestinian preventive security apparatus in Jenin, who was killed by a missile shot from a helicopter gunship on his car. Consequently tens others were wounded . Palestinian families, mujahideen and members of the Palestinian security apparatus confronted the incursion. US made F-16 fighters bombed Palestinian security posts in the center of the town. Before withdrawing , “Israeli” occupation forces kidnapped a lot of Palestinian young men. “Israeli” helicopter gun ships raided over villages close to Jenin which also lies under Palestinian control. Three Palestinians were killed in the nearby village of Arraba and two were killed at Tubas in the same area by ground-to-air missiles shot at from a number of Apache helicopters in the direction of one of the houses which led to the martyrdom of the three Palestinians, an eight-year-old girl, a women and two members of the Islamic Jihad movement, Assad abu Dakka and Wa’el Assaf. “Israeli” forces also destroyed some houses among which the house of the martyr Mohammed Bsharat. The number of those wounded increased to around a 100 in Jenin and the neighboring villages. In retaliation to the “Israeli” attacks, Palestinian Popular Resistance Forces attacked three settler cars in Kalkilia in the West Bank. It mentioned in a statement that the group of the martyr Abu Ali Mustafa killed and wounded a number of settlers who were taking these cars.

“Israeli” tanks enter Jericho killing seven Palestinians…(4)

Some say focus on U.S. attacks is cover for escalation

“Israeli” forces capped a day of incursions by driving tanks into the West Bank town of Jericho early Thursday, after raiding three other West Bank localities. Palestinian security officials said seven Palestinians, including an 11-year-old girl, were killed.

The sources said 22 “Israeli” tanks and three bulldozers entered Jericho, an oasis town in the arid Jordan River valley. The “Israeli” military had no immediate comment.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who lives in Jericho, drew a connection between the incursion and the terror attacks in New York and Washington Tuesday that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.

"The “Israelis” are using the tragedy of the events in New York and Washington, feeling that the attention of the world is elsewhere," he said. "There was nothing to provoke this."

Earlier Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi also said “Israel” is "using this tremendous tragedy as a cover for an escalation against the Palestinians."

Erekat told The Associated Press that he had called U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, the American Middle East envoy, and European Union envoy Miguel Moratinos to complain about the “Israeli” move.

Following the Jericho incursion, a cloud of smoke and an orange glow could be seen at the Aqbat Jaber refugee camp area at the south end of town.

The purpose of the “Israeli” raid wasn't immediately clear, but the presence of the bulldozers indicated that they intended to tear down Palestinian structures, as they have in previous incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas.

In “Israel’s” incursions a day earlier, tanks moved into the West Bank town of Jenin and two nearby villages - Tamoun and Arrabeh.

Seven Palestinians were killed - two of them members of the Islamic Jihad when “Israeli” tanks shelled their hideout. The 11-year-old sister of a third militant in the house also died, Palestinian security officials said.

In a separate incident, three Palestinian security officials were killed when their convoy of unmarked cars came under “Israeli” helicopter attack near Tamoun, witnesses said.

In Jenin, “Israeli” tanks and bulldozers destroyed a two-story police headquarters building and then returned to the edge of the town. A gunman from the militant Hamas was killed by a tank shell during the incursion.

In Gaza, a Palestinian was killed when soldiers opened fire on a taxi. The military said the vehicle ignored orders to stop.

Palestinians fear the price they will have to pay…(5)

Mahmoud Abdullah was at home watching television, when news of the terror assault on the United States broke. As the carnage grew, he did not take to the streets to dance in celebration.

But he did feel this horrendous slaughter had proved a point. "I told myself that this is a strike from God, and it showed that there are some forces stronger than the Americans in this world," he said yesterday. "I felt that there had been a change in the balance within the world."

Mr Abdullah, 23, used to make his living selling clothes in Bethlehem market, but now – like many, many thousands of other Palestinians on the West Bank – he is unemployed, having lost his livelihood to the economic collapse brought about by the intifada and “Israel’s” military siege of Palestinian areas.

Bitterness has set in as the loss of Palestinian lives has risen steadily over the last year to more than 600. With it, has come a deepening of a long-held antipathy towards the US for the money – some $3bn a year – and weapons and political support it has lavished on “Israel”.

Most of the world will have been disgusted by the television footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets in the hours after the catastrophe in the US. The crowds were not large – except in the West Bank city of Nablus where several thousand took part – but the impact of the pictures was immense.

Many Palestinians were at pains to point out yesterday that these revellers did not reflect the majority view. "These are people in total despair," said one PLO official, "They know that they will be blamed for these attacks, even though the Palestinians were not involved, and they believe “Israel” will now be allowed to do what it likes to them."

People in the streets of the occupied territories approached by The Independent yesterday expressed conflicting emotions. They condemned the massacre – along with their own leader, Yasser Arafat, and the entire Middle East, including some of its most extreme elements. Mr Arafat donated blood yesterday for the victims of the terror attacks while other Palestinians held a vigil in Al-Quds.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, leaders of the Palestinian Hamas and several Islamic clerics, came out against it. So did the countries on America's blacklist of nations which it accuses of "sponsoring terror" – Libya, Sudan and Iran.

And yet, at street-level, Arab opposition to American policy in the Middle East remained unshaken, and often emerged entwined with the view that the assault on America represented a terrible form of divine justice, a counterblow by Islam against the world's secular, consumer-mad superpower.

It is not – Palestinians argued – a contradiction to wholly oppose the mass murders in the US but to continue to argue that American conduct in the Middle East has been wrong and cruel.

If any heart could be expected to be hardened to Tuesday's horrors it was that of Nahme Hard, 58. Last November, her two sisters – Rachme, 59, and Aziza, 54 – were killed by a missile fired from a US-made Apache helicopter outside her Bethlehem home. It was “Israel’s” first assassination of the intifada, and it found its target – a Fatah gunman called Hussein Abayat, 34. But it also killed the two innocent women, who were passing by.

She condemns America's failure to persuade “Israel” to lift the economic blockade of the West Bank and Gaza, and shakes her head despairingly at the suffering of her people.

But the massacres in New York and Washington horrified her as much as any other. "I cried. I thought – what crime have these people committed? They are men, women and children. What have they done wrong? They aren't guilty of anything."

There were nods of agreement from her nephew, a 31-year-old officer in the Palestinian Preventative Security force called Hamed. He said: "I was shocked when I saw people celebrating. They are not representatives of the Palestinian people. They were just kids. Our battle is not with the Americans. It is with “Israel”. Civilians should not be killed like this. Osama bin Laden is not our friend. He is an enemy."

Underlying these emotions, there is a widespread fear of the price that Palestinians will now have to pay. Despite their dislike of US policy, the Palestinian leadership still looks to Washington as the only power that can ultimately mediate between them and “Israel”. After this week's events, the Bush administration, always reluctant to be sucked into the Middle East quagmire, will keep its distance.

Police Arab affairs expert tells Or…(6)

`We made mistakes that could lead to our own Twin Towers'

Since October, the police has bought thousands of riot control suits for its force, changed its crowd-control policy from rubber coated bullets to tear gas and emphasized the use of non-lethal weaponry in quelling riots, Deputy Commander Mordechai Nahmani, head of national police operations, told the Or commission of inquiry yesterday.
The panel is investigating last October's riots in the North during which 13 Arabs were killed.
But Deputy Commander Reuven Levy, Arab affairs advisor to the national police chief, in an impassioned appeal to the committee, said "the way to avoid a Twin Towers tragedy is to stop whitewashing. Our state [over time] has committed a lot of sins with inequality of budgets, neglect of Islamic holy sites, lack of construction for young Arab couples, indifference to the employment situation for university-trained Arabs and failure to enforce the law in the Arab sector," he said.
"You can't sweep such a big problem under the carpet," said Levy, who, prior to his current post, served as an Arab affairs expert for the “Israeli” Army for 25 years.
"The state has made huge strategic mistakes. These are our brothers. You have to understand that we have to live with them and they with us. For 53 years they have been loyal citizens. We shouldn't be surprised that if we don't deal with a conflict, it eventually blows up," he said.
"A decade ago, it could have been solved with money, goodwill, generosity. I'm not sure it can be solved now. It requires sensitivity, understanding, investment. We can't go on whitewashing it. Enough, if we whitewash, we get the Twin Towers."
Levy's impassioned testimony, which started with a claim that he had warned that the rioting was inevitable, came after statements by Police Intelligence Commander Haim Klein, who said the police was not surprised by the rioting but only by its timing and intensity.
Calling the Shin Bet "our main seismograph," he said the security service never warned the police about the possibility of rioting breaking out among “Israeli” Arabs.
But panel members shifted uncomfortably in their seats yesterday when Klein told them that in a top-level security session held at then-prime minister Ehud Barak's home on September 30, the eve of the rioting, there was "not a hint" about the possibility of demonstrations breaking out in Arab towns and villages.
The panel has evidence indicating that an intelligence document with detailed information about possible rioting had been prepared by the Shin Bet. However, despite standard operating procedure, a report on the document was never passed to the police's Intelligence Department.
The panel pressed Klein on "indications" that something could happen in the “Israeli” Arab community at the outset of October as a result of a number of incidents, including the death of seven Palestinians protesters on the Temple Mount on September 29; the resulting violence that broke out in the territories; the television footage of the shooting death of the 12-year-old Palestinian boy Muhamed Doura; and the calls for a general strike, along with marches and rallies, by “Israeli” Arabs. All these events, the panel members said, should have indicated potential trouble to the police.

“Israeli” woman killed in drive-by shooting…(7)

An “Israeli” woman was killed in a drive-by shooting last night near Qalqiliya while another “Israeli” was wounded in the leg when shots were fired at his vehicle near Dolev, west of Ramallah.
Ruth Shu'i, 46, a mother of two, was traveling to her home in the settlement of Alfei Menashe around 7:15 P.M. when shots were fired from a passing vehicle near the village of Habla. She sustained injuries to her head and stomach and died en route to Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba. Her husband Shlomo, who was driving the car, was slightly wounded. After the incident, hundreds of residents from Alfei Menashe and neighboring settlements demonstrated at the Habla Junction, where a number of attacks have taken place.

Footnotes:

1-      The Daily Star, 13-9-2001.

2-      Same source.

3-      Manar TV, 13-9-2001.

4-      Associated Press, 12-9-2001.

5-      Independent, 13-9-2001.

6-      Haaretz, 13-9-2001.

7-      Same source.