Dear Friends of PACE,
Dear Friends of the Palestinian people,

We are sorry for the delay in our briefings. Sometimes we get caught in the struggle like every body else, and that keeps us from writing to you. We have been lately very busy interviewing the families of the martyrs and injured and documenting the events of the Intifada. We will soon start sending you interviews with the mothers and the fathers of young Palestinian martyrs.

That the media is not paying as much attention as before to the events in the occupied territories does not mean that the Israeli occupation army has stopped his aggression against the Palestinian civilians. In fact the demonstrations and clashes persist all over the Palestinian territories sustained by the Israeli military occupation of our land. The number of deaths and injuries did not decrease, and the nightly shelling of the civilian houses all over the Palestinian land continues. The shelling has

turned some neighborhoods in the Palestinian cities into ruins as if we were in real war. The Jewish settlers also pursued their wicked work in cutting and burning Palestinian trees and destroying Palestinian farmland, always under the protection of the Israeli occupation army.

The Israeli occupation army is still encircling the Palestinian cities and villages. The different barricades aim at humiliating the Palestinians and hindering them from living a normal life. A person from Hebron stopped at a checkpoint at the entrance of Ramallah would be treated as if he was breaking the law by being there. It is a psychological pressure that aims at making the Palestinians reluctant from moving between the cities, as if the Israeli army is preparing for a real geographic separation of the different Palestinian districts. The curfew on certain villages and the old city of Hebron has been maintained almost continuously since the beginning of the Intifada. The old city of Hebron counts more than 40 thousand Palestinians who were locked up in their houses to satisfy the racist needs of some four hundred Jewish settlers.

A new development that was applied by the Israeli occupation army is the shelling of hospitals, medical centers, and cars circulating in the streets of the cities from helicopters. Yesterday night a hospital was shelled in Hebron, and one young person who was injured in his leg a few days ago by an Israeli bullet received another Israeli bullet in his hand this time while he was lying in his bed at that hospital. Today a Palestinian civilian car that was driving on a main road in the city of Beit Sahour (east of Bethlehem) with five people inside (including a woman and children according to eyewitnesses) was chosen as a target by an Israeli military helicopter. The car was was completely destroyed. One person was killed and five were injured. The shelling also damaged nearby private cars and houses.

Today medical staff and ambulances organized a march from the Red Cresent Society in Al-Bireh City to the Red Cross in Ramallah City. They called for protection from Israeli attacks that do not spare any of those who, from the Red Crescent or the Red Cross, try to help evacuate or give first aid to the Palestinian injured. Not only that, but also the hospitals and the medical centers have become a target for the shelling from helicopters and tanks.

The PACE Team