More
than 200 international volunteers, including some 50 Britons,
deployed themselves in Ramallah and two refugee camps at Bethlehem
last night in an attempt to form "human shields" for
Palestinian families.
The British
contingent, ranging from a retired nurse from Kent to a group
of students from Manchester, joined Americans and Europeans dispersed
among houses close to Yasser Arafat's headquarters and Israeli
army tank formations near Bethlehem's Azar and Aida refugee camps.
Israel
ordered all foreign volunteers and journalists to leave Ramallah
yesterday, as another media worker was shot and wounded while
covering the fighting in the city.
The warning
came as Anthony Shadeed, an American reporter for the Boston Globe,
was wounded in the back and shoulder after being shot near the
city's main square. He said he was walking along one of the main
streets with his Palestinian "fixer" when he was hit
from behind by a single sniper shot. Israeli soldiers denied that
he had been shot by their forces.
Israel
warned that any foreigners who chose to remain in Ramallah did
so at the risk of being mistaken for Palestinian gunmen and shot.
But speaking
above gunshots and the clatter of a surveillance helicopter, Rory
Macmillan, an international business lawyer from Scotland, said
he was at the Aida camp in Bethlehem to offer non-violent resistance
to any attempt by the Israelis to arrest Palestinians or threaten
families.
"I
decided to use my Easter holidays to come out with a group to
dig up roadblocks and block tanks in the occupied territories,"
he said. "There are 15 or more tanks close by and there's
a general expectation that they'll move in.
"The soldiers don't use the streets - they move from house
to house, blasting holes in the wall to get through. We're here
in the hope they'll hold back if there's a foreign national."
In Ramallah, Osama Mutawa from Brighton said his group of human
shields asked the British consulate yesterday to evacuate them
but had been told there were no plans to do so. He said: "The
British public has no idea what is going on here. We decided we
should come and try and stay with families to protect them."
Sarah
Irving, 26, a Manchester University MA student in political economy,
who is also staying at Azar, said: "You can't go anywhere
at the moment, it's too dangerous, but we are each staying with
a family. There are 38 tanks at the nearest checkpoint and we
can hear an Israeli Cobra helicopter overhead."
Dr Mortaza
Sahibzada, another British volunteer, said that despite the deteriorating
situation, he planned to stay on at Aida until the second week
in April, when he had to get back to his work as a research fellow
in engineering at Imperial College, London.
Most
of the British volunteers travelled to the Middle East with the
International Solidarity Movement, a coalition of groups concerned
about the plight of the Palestinians.
