1- Investigating the Truth About the Death of Mohamed Oufi
2- Nablus: Terror and Resistance
3- It's OK to Eat Belgian Chocolate
4- Closure around Jenin
5- Israel divides Bethlehem with a wall of concrete, fear and suspicion

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1) Investigating the Truth About the Death of Mohamed Oufi Tulkarm, Palestine
Saturday, 22 February

Internationals from International Solidarity Movement last night interviewed neighbors and friends of the family of 23 year old Mohamed Araf Oufi, resident of Tulkarm Camp, to gather further information to clarify conflicting news reports regarding his death there early morning February 20.

According to 20 February 03 Haretz this young man was part of a group of armed men who had opened fire on Israeli soldiers on a special operation in Tulkarm Camp. The Israeli military media is very active and, as with military institutions worldwide, interested in promoting a positive image for itself. Knowing this it is difficult to accept as factual what is
reported in the news re Israeli military operations in the Occupied Territories.

After last night's interview, during which time another young man was also killed in Tulkarm Camp, I find this image confirmed. Contrary to the Haretz news article, the young man, Mohammed, murdered on the 20th was not part of a group of armed men shooting
at the Israeli army. He was leaving his house at 5:00 in the morning to go to the mosque to pray. He was not a member of a militant group, just a religious young man. Mohamed Oufi was warned by neighbors trying to go to work that Israeli soldiers were about in the camp and that he should not go down the street leading toward the mosque. The young man replied, "I am just going to pray," and stepped out and around the corner from his house onto the street where he was killed.

As soon as Mohamed Oufi stepped several paces into street, he was able to confirm the presence of an Israeli jeep at the foot of the street, about 150 meters. As he was turning back, he was shot in the right posterior neck and also received other bullet wounds to the upper body. Mohammed's mother and brother were not able to collect his body until the soldiers had left the area for fear of getting shot themselves, so his body lay alone in the street for about 45 minutes after the soldiers had confirmed that he was dead.

The jeep referred to was parked in front of a three story house that eight Israeli soldiers had occupied since 2 AM. They first confined the family of six, two grandparents, three children and their mother, to the bottom floor , forcing them to remain silent, not allowing them to use the toilet or cover even the youngest child with a blanket.

Two soldiers kept the frightened family at gunpoint until 6 AM,and the remaining six soldiers, one of them armed with a gun capable of shooting a 25mm shell, were positioned on the roof. At 5 PM when Mohamed stepped out into the street, he was shot. We saw from the roof in similar light conditions what a person at 150 meters would have looked like.

If the assailant had no weapon with infrared vision, the person would present as a black form with no apparent detail. If this was the case, it could be said that the Israeli special operation soldier shot an unidentified man. If an infrared scope was used, then it could be said, according to our witnesses, that an unarmed man was deliberately killed. Very deadly either way one calls it. Many Israeli soldiers are armed with M-16 guns. Mohammed Oufi's upper body showed evidence of 25mm weaponry. After Mohammed was assassinated, an armed man on the
"wanted" list started firing at the special operations soldiers, and he was shot and critically wounded in the chest.

I am submitting this account in the hopes that you will print it in entirety to balance the inaccurate
story from the Israeli military printed in the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz. and distributed as per usual to
international news services.

Susan Van Dongen,
International Solidarity Movement
Tulkarm, Palestine
054-257-075
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2-Nablus: Terror and Resistance

Today is the fourth day of the Israeli Army's campaign of terror against the Old City of Nablus,
during which ISM activists based in the city worked with Palestinian UPMRC (first aid) volunteers in the delivery of food and medicine to stranded households, rescuing the injured, evacuating families from occupied houses and monitoring the activities of Israeli troops.

In their rescue operations they were frequently hindered by Israeli soldiers who denied them access to areas where wounded people were stranded. On two occasions yesterday they were able to rescue families who called out to them from the top floors of their occupied houses. With the ISM activists looking on, the families were able to escape from the houses without interference from the soldiers occupying the house. However, today they were unable to rescue a woman, her ten year old son and new baby from a house under occupation by Israeli
special forces. The woman's husband has been taken into detention by the Israelis and the soldiers denied that the woman wanted to leave her home. When the activists insisted on talking to her the soldiers took her to window while keeping her children in another room. With the soldiers standing behind her the visibly terrified woman, whose arm had been injured, told the activists that she didn't want to leave. Later the soldiers vacated the house for the house across the road. They had been there only an hour when the activists arrived with a doctor who had come to give a tranquilising injection to a hysterical teenage girl who was traumatised by the soldiers' behaviour but already the house had been thoroughly vandalised. The family of eight were all being kept in a small room.

Last night the activists were fired upon by Arab mercenaries who were holding prisoner an ambulance driver, and four UPMRC volunteers in the Hammam Shifeh bathhouse. This time the mercenaries shot to kill rather than shooting over their heads or at the ground as it their usual practice and the activists heard the bullets whistling past their heads. The ISM then contacted Miri Weingarten of the human rights organisation, Physicians for Human Rights, who contacted the Israeli Army at 8.15 pm, informing them that medical workers were being held as prisoners in violation of international law. The Army spokesperson calmly informed her that they were aware of this and they would be released in 10 to 15 minutes. At 10 pm the activists were told by the troops that they could retrieve the female UPMRC volunteer from the bathhouse.

When they did so the rest of the medical workers were led away to the interrogation centre at Jamal Abd Nasser School. They were finally released from there at 2 am last night. It seems that it is the Israeli Army's strategy to round up for interrogation as many men as possible in the hope of recruiting them as informers.

This morning the Army expanded the focus of their operations from the east to the west of the Old City but their tactics remained the same: human shields were made to walk before the soldiers as they conducted their house to house searches and made their captives stand in front of the buildings as they ransacked homes, took away the men, occupied houses and confined their occupants in single rooms.

A new feature of the operation was that tanks based in the suburb of Ras El-Ain fired their shells
into the Old City. Their targets were not apparent those who witnessed the assault since there were no resistance fighters in the area.

This afternoon Tommy, a Danish journalist working with the ISM, and 15 UPMRC volunteers were bringing food to families living near the Jamal Abd Nasser School in the Ras el-Ain suburb. The entire school has been turned into a military base by the occupying army who are being billeted in occupied houses surrounding the school. The families of these houses have not been allowed out to buy food since the invasion commenced. They found the streets around the school full of tanks, armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and soldiers. At 4.40 pm they saw that four other UPMRC volunteers were being held next to an APC so they approached to investigate. When they arrived at the APC its commander immediately demanded to see Tommy's passport. When Tommy handed it over, the APC's commander, Ariel Ze'ev emerged from the vehicle.

"Do you remember me fat-arse?" he asked. "You're in big trouble now." Ariel Ze'ev headbutted Tommy at Azmut checkpoint two weeks ago and. He and his men are renown in Nablus as among the most sadistic soldiers in the area. He has boasted to ISM activists that he is
not human and enjoys making people suffer, has been seen by the activists beating women at Azmut checkpoint and has been known to roam the streets around his occupied house in search of Palestinian children to take back and beat up.

The soldiers then took one of the UPMRC volunteers into the APC as a prisoner and then began to taunt Tommy.
"Am I getting my passport back?" the journalist asked.
"No no no!" Ariel replied. "When I get asked about this I will say it was all a misunderstanding.
Anyhow I've been missing you. I need something ugly to look at."
"I haven't seen you for a long time either," replied Tommy. "I was beginning to think that Israeli
soldiers weren't that bad."

"You never know when I'll be back," replied Ariel. "By the way, where's Maria? I've been missing
Maria." (Maria is another member of the ISM.) Gradually, all of the prisoners were released except Tommy and Jaber Jowbreh, the UPMRC worker held in the APC.

When darkness fell Ariel told Tommy he could leave but that he would keep his passport. Unwilling to spend the night in such unwholesome company, Tommy left and is working with the Danish consulate to recover his passport.

After Tommy left Jaber Jowbreh remained unaccounted for several hours but, after a coordinated campaign by the ISM and the Israeli human rights group, Hamoked, to discover his location, he was released from Jaber Jowbreh prison at around midnight.

Two Palestinians were killed yesterday (a man and his grandson who were crossing the road together) and two more killed today. One was killed trying to cross the street with his wife (who was injured in the same attack and is now in hospital). The other was shot dead by soldiers when they saw him trying to close the door of his store, which had been damaged when the soldiers forced their way into the store on a previous occasion. The ISM are unable to determine the number people wounded over the past two days as they have been too busy to visit the hospital.

The Army claims that its operation in Nablus is intended to destroy the infrastructure of terrorist
(Palestinian resistance) groups operating in Nablus but, because the Old City was not sealed off before it was invaded, the resistance fighters were easily able to escape to other parts of the city . A more likely explanation for the operation is that it was intended to terrorise the city's
population into submission.

If this is the case then it seems to have been totally unsuccessful. Yesterday, 1,500 people
gathered at a rally outside of the Old City organised by the Political Coalition (an alliance of
Nablus community associations). This evening the Political Coalition coordinated a protest involving the entire population of Nablus. At 8.30 the people of the city all came out onto their rooftops and to their windows and began to cry Allah Akhbar (God is Great), whistle and bang their pots and pans together.

The more daring then began to gather in the streets, in spite of the pouring rain, to shake hands
light fires and march to the city centre as they were cheered from the windows and rooftops of
Nablus. Tommy, accompanied the crowd which and reported that he felt carried along by the tremendous civic pride of the people of Nablus.

Though physically exhausted from their labours of the past four days and shocked by the savagery of the violence that they have witnessed against defenseless civilians, the spirits of the ISM activists have been raised by this display of resistance by a city that is occupied but nevertheless unconquered.

The attachment is a picture taken today of a soldier in Nablus guarding two of his human shields.

For further information contact:
Tommy on 059 373 180 or Maria on 059 381 803.
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3- It's OK to Eat Belgian Chocolate
Uri Avnery
22.3.03

"Don't eat Belgian chocolate," the Israel consul in Florida ordered the large Jewish community there. In Israel, anti-Belgian curses reached an ear-splitting new crescendo. Miserable Belgium! Mad Belgium! Megalomaniac Belgium! And again and again, Anti-Semitic Belgium! Neo-Nazi Belgium! The Israeli ambassador was, of course, recalled from Brussels. No wonder, how can Israel keep an ambassador in the world capital of anti-Semitism? The storm broke when a Belgian court decided that Ariel Sharon can be sued for alleged war crimes, but only after finishing his term as Prime Minister of Israel. Israel army officers connected with the 1982
massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps can be sued even now.
On an Israeli TV program, the anchorman, a lawyer, put it this way: "Anti-Semitic Belgium wants to judge the officers of a second country for crimes committed in a third country, while the accused have no connection at all with Belgium, are not on Belgium territory and the whole affair does not concern Belgium. That is megalomania, really a matter for psychiatrists!"
"Strange," I replied on the program, "I seem to remember a case where country A kidnapped in country B the citizen of country C for committing in country D crimes against the citizens of countries E, F and G, all this in spite of the fact the crimes were committed before
country A even existed."

I meant, of course, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, to which we all agreed.
"How can you compare the two!" the other participants on the program cried out in outraged unison. And indeed, how can one compare the actions of Jews with actions of goyim committed against Jews? Well, it were the Jews who demanded, after World War II, that all countries put Nazi war criminals and their allies on trial. Eichmann was judged in Israel according to the Israeli "Law for bringing the Nazis and their Helpers to Justice", which does not recognize any borders.
More recently the Knesset enacted another law, enabling Israeli courts to judge perpetrators of any crime committed against Jews anywhere in the world. If so, what's wrong with the Belgian law of "universal jurisdiction", that allows Belgian courts to judge was criminals from all over the world?

Immanuel Kant promulgated the Categorical Imperative: "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature". But then, Kant was probably an anti-Semite.

Hundreds of years ago, the world adopted a legal doctrine that allowed every country to judge and hang pirates, irrespective of their ethnic identity, origin and area of activity. The assumption was that the pirate is an enemy of humanity at large, and that therefore every country has the right - indeed, the duty - to judge him. The Belgian law against war crimes is a step in this direction, and I hope that many other countries will follow suit. Of course, it would be better if the International Criminal Court in The Hague would fulfil this duty, but much time will pass before it will be able to. Immense political pressures are being exerted, many limitations have been imposed, its hands and feet have been shackled. Worse, the only super-power, the United States, is openly trying to destroy it (as it destroyed the League of Nations after World War I.)

My dream is that before the end of the 21st century a new, binding world order, headed by a world parliament, will come into being. This order must include a world court and a world police force, that will judge conflicts between nations the way today's national courts judge
conflicts between people. The road there is long and full of obstacles, decades will pass before humanity will reach this stage. But we must strive towards this end. In the meantime, other countries must follow the Belgian example, in order to progress along this way. Especially
concerning war crimes.

Some will say that we should not extradite our fellow-citizens, that it is the duty of every state to judge its war-criminals itself. But this is utopian: no country in the world has really done so. That is quite natural: not only are states disinclined to admit to such shameful crimes and try to hide them, but generally such crimes are committed by agents of the state itself. The affair of Sabra and Shatila is a good example. Here, briefly, are the facts:
In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded West Beirut, violating an explicit commitment given to the American mediator, Phillip Habib, not to do so. By that time, the PLO forces had already left the city.

From that moment on, West Beirut, including the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, became an Israeli occupied territory, making the Israeli army responsible for everything happening there. After the occupation, the IDF let the "Phalangists", members of an extreme Maronite Christian group, enter the two camps. These people has already committed heinous massacres in other Palestinian refugee camps.

They were headed by a notorious mass-murderer, Eli Hweika. All senior Israeli officials involved with Lebanon knew that the Phalangists were committing atrocities in order to panic the
Palestinians into fleeing from Lebanon. When the Israeli cabinet was informed of the army's intention of letting the Phalangists in, Minister David Levy, who was born in Morocco, warned that this would cause a disaster. His colleagues ignored his warning.

Immediately upon entering the camps, the Phalangists started to butcher men, women and children indiscriminately. The commander of the action, Eli Hweika, oversaw the action from
the roof of the Israeli divisional command post, which was located right next to the camps. The officers of the Israeli division commander, General Amos Yaron, overheard Hweika instructing his men by walkie-talkie to kill women and children, too. They hastened to inform Yaron, but he ignored the message. (Later he admitted: "Our senses had become blunted.")

During the night, while the massacre was going on (it lasted altogether three days), the Israeli Chief-of-Staff, General Raphael Eytan, ordered the army to accede to the Phalangists' request and light the area with flares. He also provided the Phalangists with a tractor (which served, it is assumed, to bury the bodies).

A young Israeli officer who heard the horrible stories of the shocked women who had succeeded in fleeing from the camps, ran from one officer to another, begging them to interfere. All of them refused. After the massacre, the Begin government refused to order an
independent investigation. In a huge demonstration in Tel-Aviv (the mythological 400-thousand-demo), we compelled the government to appoint a high-level state investigation committee, headed by Supreme Court judge Yitzhaq Kahan. It did a good job and its report included all the
facts mentioned above. In its conclusions, it found that the Minister of Defense (Sharon), the Chief-of-Staff and a number of other senior officers bear "indirect responsibility" for the outrage. Some of us argued even then that the committee had bent backwards in order to protect the reputation of the state, and that from the same facts much more far-reaching conclusions could have been drawn.

The committee recommended, inter alia, to dismiss the Minister of Defense from his office and to remove Yaron from the active command of troops in the field. But the committee did not recommend to dismiss Sharon altogether from the government and from public life, neither did
it dismiss Yaron from the army. It did not take any step against the Chief-of-Staff, because he was about to finish his term anyhow. Other officers suffered minor penalties. Today, Sharon is Prime Minister, practically commanding the army and Amos Yaron is Director General of the Ministry of Defense. As a matter of fact, all those accused by the Kahan report have been
promoted.

Most importantly, not one of those suspected of responsibility for the massacre was ever put on trial (as distinguished from a commission of inquiry). After the enactment of the Belgian law of universal jurisdiction, the survivors of the massacre sued Sharon and the officers in Brussels.
It's this case that has caused the present uproar. Nobody questions the integrity of the Belgian judicial system. If Sharon and his men are confident of their innocence, why shouldn't they
stand trial and prove it? After all, the Israeli government has put at their disposal its senior attorneys, paid by the state. (One could ask, of course, why I should pay for the legal defense of people put on trial for alleged war crimes. But never mind.)

All this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The use of this defamation against everybody who dares to criticize Sharon and his colleagues reminds one of Dr. Samuel Johnson's sayings: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." So you may eat Belgian chocolate. Even if it is of the bitter kind.

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4-Closure around Jenin

During the last three days the Israeli army has repeatedly blocked the roads to Jenin, restricting the freedom of movement between the provincial capital and the surrounding villages.

Saturday at 3.30 pm the ISM activists present in Jenin received a call saying that “hundreds” of Palestinians were denied to get to their home in Berqin, a village of 5.000 people 5 km outside the city. The only road connecting Jenin and Berqin is situated in the Berqin Valley surrounded by step mountainsides.

Three ISM activists arrived at the closure at 4 pm. At that time people were hiking up a narrow and muddy path on the mountainside to get around the military closure, which consisted of one APC with two soldiers posted on top. 15 cars were parked in line 50 meters from the closure and 40-50 Palestinians were waiting. “No one is allowed through,” some Palestinians told the ISM activists. The civilians hiking the path on the mountainside were visible to the soldiers, who allowed them to pass without interference.

“We are international human rights observers and we just want to talk to you,” an ISM activist said approaching the APC. One of the soldiers ordered them to go back.
“Don’t come closer. I will shoot you if you do,” he yelled pointing his M16 at the ISM activists.
They repeated the abovementioned message and approached the APC a few steps - now 15 meters away. The soldier shot two rounds of live ammunition hitting the ground by the roadside.
“The road is completely closed. No one is allowed through. If they want, they can go over the
mountains,” he yelled pointing at the Palestinians climbing the path just 30 meters above him.
“Not even an ambulance,” the ISM activists replied. “No. Not even an ambulance,” the soldier said. A few minutes later a jeep came in high speed from the Jenin direction and stopped in the middle of the large group of Palestinians. Three soldiers jumped out of the jeep and started shooting in the air. The Palestinians ran or drove away towards Jenin.

Quickly the ISM activists were the only ones on the scene but soldiers. They started questioning the soldiers about the reason for the closure. “Now we will let them through but only by foot,” one of the newly arrived soldiers in the jeep said. But at that time there were no Palestinians left.
The ISM activist observed the closure from a distance for half an hour - until sunset. In that period of time five cars were denied entrance to Berqin, but seven Palestinians who tried to get through by foot were allowed.

Lasse Schmidt, Jenin.
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5-Israel divides Bethlehem with a wall of concrete, fear and suspicion.
By Justin Huggler
22 February 2003
The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=380487

As you arrive from Jerusalem, the first street of Bethlehem, lined with old, carved limestone houses, is deserted. Where the tourists used to throng, the restaurants are boarded up. In a few months, a high concrete wall will run down the middle of this street, blocking a neighbourhood of Bethlehem from the rest of the city.

The inhabitants here, predominantly from Bethlehem's fast-dwindling Palestinian Christian community, will be cut off from their city by a concrete wall guarded by Israeli army patrols. They will be allowed to cross into Bethlehem only through an Israeli army checkpoint, with permits the army can issue or withhold as it sees fit. They will not be allowed into Jerusalem, on the other side of the pocket of land they will be walled off in.

Amjad Awwad will be cut off from the mini-market he runs. His house is on one side of the street, the mini-market on the other. After the wall is built he will need the Israeli army's permission to go to work and to go home again. But that is not his only worry.

"They told us if you want a doctor in the night the hospital will have to phone the Israeli
government and arrange permission for him to be allowed in. If it's a heart attack, we'll die before they allow the ambulance in."

After the wall is built, the Bethlehem municipality will even need military permission to send trucks to collect the rubbish. The wall is part of what has become known as Israel's "Berlin Wall", electrified fences and concrete walls the Israeli government is building around the West Bank to seal it off and stop Palestinian militants crossing into Israel.

Here, as elsewhere, the wall is not following the 1967 border but dipping deep into the West Bank. The reason it is slicing into Bethlehem, say Israeli authorities, is so Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish pilgrimage site inside the city, will be on the Israeli side of the wall, guaranteeing easy access for pilgrims.

For the 500 or so people who will be cut off from the rest of Bethlehem, the wall is a disaster. The order to build it was announced this week, while the world's attention was on Iraq. The Israeli cabinet decision to include Rachel's Tomb was made public on 11 September, the anniversary terrorist attacks on America.

No coincidence, says the Mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, who will be cut off from his relatives by the wall. His son-in-law lives in the area that will be walled off.

"Why do they need the wall?" he asks. "That whole area around Rachel's Tomb is already under full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords."

The tomb is already surrounded by a concrete wall, and there are Israeli army guard-posts on top of the buildings around it.

"Why do they need it unless they have hidden intentions?" says Mr Nasser, suggesting the real reason for walling off the area is to force the people to leave, so the land can be annexed to Israel. That sentiment is echoed by Dr Jad Issac, of the Applied Research Institute, Jerusalem, a Palestinian organisation that makes maps of Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories using satellite images it buys commercially. They show Bethlehem being surrounded by fences to protect new settlement suburbs of Jerusalem built in the occupied West Bank.

"There will be no room for Bethlehem to expand naturally," Dr Issac says. "The population density will become so high people will start leaving freely. We will be forced to migrate."