JERUSALEM
- A U.S. activist said Tuesday that she will carry on
her protests against the Israeli military campaign in the West
Bank despite coming under Israeli fire.
Kate
Raphael said was at the front of a group of about 200 pro-Palestinian
demonstrators marching from Bethlehem to neighboring Beit Jalla
on Monday. She said a soldier in an Israeli armored vehicle approached
them and opened fire.
"He
fired two shots in the air," she said. "Then he fired
into the ground."
Six of
the marchers were hurt by flying rocks and debris when the bullets
hit the road and walls alongside, she said. All were treated at
Beit Jalla hospital and released within a few hours, she said.
Raphael,
42, from Berkeley, California, said the group was organized by
the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian group. The
original plan was to march on Israeli checkpoints, dismantle roadblocks
and replant olive trees uprooted by Israelis in the West Bank.
"Now,
because there's a war on, what we're doing now is more human shields,"
she told The Associated Press by telephone from the Aida refugee
camp next to Bethlehem, where members of the group spent the night
after the gunfire incident.
The group
represents eight nations and includes about two dozen Americans,
an organizer said. It started its activities on Friday.
Israel
embarked on a large-scale offensive in the West Bank after a series
of deadly Palestinian suicide bomb attacks, including one on the
first night of Passover that killed 22 people celebrating the
holiday at a seaside hotel.
Israel
said its goal is to stamp out Palestinian terrorism. On Monday,
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called the Israeli actions
"state terrorism."
On Monday,
Israel ordered the deportation of 11 French activists from another
group who defied an Israeli ban and walked into Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s office, besieged since Friday
by Israeli tanks and troops.
Raphael's
group planned to meet Tuesday and decide on further protests,
she said. "My personal feeling is that we have to go back
out and have another march and show that we are not going to be
intimidated and that the Palestinian people are not going to be
intimidated," she said.
Raphael
said she was brought up in a pro-Israel Jewish household, but
discovered later that what she had learned about the creation
of the state of Israel "just wasn't true."
Arabs
and Israel dispute the circumstances of the creation of the Jewish
state in 1948. The Jews see it as a return to their historic homeland,
while Arabs believe they were made to pay the price for the murder
of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in World War II by sacrificing
their land for a Jewish state.
In a
two-year war that followed, about 700,000 Palestinians fled or
were evicted from their homes in Israel. The Palestinians demand
the right of the refugees and their descendants to return to their
original homes; the Israelis reject that, offering compensation
instead.
Because
of her Jewish Zionist upbringing, Raphael said, "I feel a
direct responsibility for the horrible situation that the Palestinians
are in because I feel like, unwittingly, I was part of the problem."
