** Press Review

• After midnight last night, the Israeli occupation destroyed and burned more than 30 Palestinian homes in Hebron. Israeli tanks bombarded almost all neighborhoods in the Palestinian city of 120 thousand. Five hundred Jewish extremists settlers occupied parts of the city center, and a massive Israeli occupation force is there to 'protect' them.

• Washington moved. Israel withdrew its occupation forces from Biet hanoun in Gaza.

• President Arafat describes Israel's actions in Gaza as unforgivable crime. And president Mubarak of Egypt tells Sharon enough is enough.

• The Israeli occupation troops leave a trail of destruction and terror in Gaza. Human lives literally torn to pieces. Unable to collect the torn pieces of Mohammad Al- Masri's body who received a direct hit from an Israeli tank, ambulance crews and Palestinian civilians were unable to collect his body parts scattered on a large area. Crew and civilians came under Israeli tank fire.

• The Israeli occupation forces kill four Palestinians including young boys and teenagers. Bara Al- Shaer 9 years old was hit by two Israeli bullets fired from a heavy machine gun placed on an Israeli tank occupying Gaza. Two teenagers, Hamza Obiad 15 years and Rami Mousa 16 years were also murdered by Israeli occupation troops. Scores of Palestinian civilians many of them children and women were injured by the indiscriminate Israeli gunfire against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem, Biet Jala; Al- Khader and Housan.

• President Arafat sent a letter to President Bush detailing to him the Israeli atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

• Collin Powel demands that Israeli occupation troops leave immediately. Amman is awaiting Israeli reply to the joint Jordanian Egyptian initiative. The EU declares its inability to do anything to stop the deterioration in the Middle East as Sharon escalate the situation further and further.

• Sharon is back to his true self. The mask he put on his face during the election campaign is removed. The war criminal of Sabra and Shatilla is back. This time murdering Palestinian children, men and women in Gaza and the west Bank.

• Israel builds a virtual 'third temple' for people to see on TV screens in a museum built close to the Mugrabi gate in Arab East Jerusalem.

• President Mubarak warns Sharon not to delve into the unknown. Washington says Israel has no right to reoccupy Palestinian land under PNA control.

• A Palestinian official spokesman says: Israel will not make the Palestinian people kneel.

• The Arabs feel humiliation due to their inability to do any thing against the Israeli military attacks on the Palestinian civilian population in the occupied Palestinian territories.

• As Israel describes Palestinian security forces 'terrorists' Palestinian security officials will not attend future security meetings with Israelis.

• President Bashar Al- Asad says: Israel must be held responsible for the results of its actions. Lebanon asks the Arab league to meet and discuss the latest Israeli aggression on its soil.

• Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated yesterday commemorating " prisoners day" calling on the world community to release Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

• More than 300 Palestinian children have been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces since September. According to a report by the International Secretariat of the World Organization Against Torture based in Geneva, Palestinian children and teenagers have been tortured mentally and physically. OMCT said, 100 youth have been detained at Maggido prison under the direct authority of the Israeli occupation forces, 20 in Prisons under Israeli occupation control in the West Bank, Eighty youths in Sharon and Tel Mond prisons and two teenage girls incarcerated at a women prison in Neve Tirtza prison in Ramla.

• Saudi Arabia condemns the Israeli attacks on the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

• Russia is said to be worried by the escalating situation in the Middle east.

• The head of the Israeli Shabak accuses President Arafat of smuggling weapons in his plane!

C o m m e n t

The danger to Israel's strategic and long-term interests due to Sharon's barbaric policies of murder and destruction in the occupied Palestinian territories far exceeds the dangers facing the Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territories. Sharon does not have much time to stay in power in Israel, Netanyahu his competitor for the Likud leadership anticipated three months for Sharon. Once Sharon leaves, the Israeli people will be left with a huge debt to pay particularly as Sharon is taking the area back to the seventies and before that. In one of his interviews in the Israeli press last week Sharon was asked if Israel is living by the sword.
Sharon dodged the question saying a civilized country can not be asked this question. The question is, where is this civilized country Sharon is speaking of. A country and a people who are occupying another people, steeling their freedom, destroying their land and killing their children is no civilized country.
Israel is a country with an intelligencia that supports terror, a culture based on the horrors of the Nazis, a culture that produced an army that thinks fighting the Palestinian people is like fighting Nazis forgetting that the Palestinian people are the victim, a victim of the Israeli aggression and a victim of the subsequent actions of the Nazis against the Jews. Europe wanted to clear its conscious towards the Jews, arranged for them to create a state for them in Palestine, in the process making a whole people, the Palestinian people suffer and pay the price. Europe should be ashamed, and the Israeli people must get rid of this monster called Sharon.