1) License to keep killing
As the US reaffirms its support for Israel, Palestinian civilians, including small children, were the victims this week of continuing
Israeli aggression.
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly
Issue 9 - 15 May 2002
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/585/re41.htm

Israeli soldiers posted outside the city of Jenin shot and killed a Palestinian mother and her two small children in what eyewitnesses described as "cold-blooded murder" on 5 May.

Israel's latest victims are Fatima Zakarna, 30, and her two children, 4-year- old Abir and 6-year-old Bassil.

"The victims were picking grape leaves hundreds of metres away from the Israeli tank; they posed no threat to the soldiers, yet they opened fire on the three, killing them on the spot," said Nasser Ikmeil, who witnessed the killing.

Mohamed Zakarna, Fatima's husband, said he saw the tank's machine-gun swivel in the direction of his family. Suddenly his little girl's face was riddled with bullets, his wife lay on the ground bleeding from her head and neck and his son was gasping for breath.

Overwhelmed by the massacre of his whole family, Zakarna wept uncontrollably and tore at the earth. Rather than helping him, or transferring his dying wife and kids to the hospital, Israeli soldiers behaved in a characteristic manner.

The soldiers cuffed his wrists and took him "for questioning," holding him for several hours.

Initially, the Israeli army spokesman claimed that a large bomb had gone off near the tank, and that three Palestinians were killed and one soldier was injured in the explosion. Then, a few hours later, there was a story about a fictitious land- mine exploding near the tank. Then finally, the army said that the snapping of a tank tread -- not a bomb or land-mine explosion -- produced the loud noise which "prompted" the soldiers to open fire and kill the mother and her two children.

The killing, the army said, was done "accidentally and by mistake." Nonetheless, the spokesman stressed that the soldiers acted in accordance with standing orders and violated no rules. This implies that soldiers are under orders to open fire on anything that moves in their vicinity the moment they hear an explosion and without any consideration for the consequences. But those consequences are dire for the Palestinians who lose children and other civilians "accidentally" or "by mistake" almost every day.

A few hours after the murder of the Zakarna family, the Israeli army killed a third child in Tulkarm: an 8-year-old boy identified as Tamer Khaled Abu Sirriya. The act brought the number of Palestinians killed by Israel this week to 23.

Abu Sirriya was reportedly playing with his brothers in the courtyard of their home when an Israeli bullet pierced his chest, killing him on the spot. When a Palestinian youth who was in the vicinity tried to rescue the dying child, an Israeli sniper opened fire again, injuring the rescuer, Shadi Anbar, who lost his right eye.

The US, Israel's guardian-ally, seldom publicly censures Israel for killing Palestinian civilians. The effective American collusion also enables the Israeli army to continue its daily rampages through Palestinian towns and population centres despite utterly mendacious claims about "leaving Palestinian towns."

On Tuesday, Israeli tanks rolled back into the town of Tulkarm, shooting in all directions and imposing a curfew on more than 100,000 Palestinians.

Tulkarm Governor Ezzeddin Al-Sharif said Israeli occupation troops detained more than 30 young men on suspicion of involvement in the resistance. He also pointed out that the Israeli army moved the borderline between the West Bank and Israel proper at least one kilometre eastward.

This means that thousands of acres of Palestinian farmland will be confiscated, presumably for Jewish settlement expansion. Meanwhile, the Israeli army continued to consolidate its presence in and around Palestinian population centres throughout the West Bank.

Israeli army forays and raids into major Palestinian towns are now carried out on a daily basis, in spite of the symbolic presence of some unarmed Palestinian policemen. Last week, Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz declared that Israel was no longer bound by the demarcation of the West Bank into areas "A, B, and C" pursuant the Oslo agreements. The implication of the statement is very clear: no area in the West Bank is off-limits to the Israeli army.

The actual purpose of the virtually daily penetration into Palestinian population centres has little to do with security needs, or, as the Israelis say "fighting terror," but to convey a message to the Palestinian population that the Oslo process is over and that they should come to terms with Israel's renewed direct occupation. In other words, a return to the status quo, this time with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah instead of Tunis or Beirut.

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2) Gaza Prepares for Israeli Attack
Israeli TV Report Says Operation Postponed
By HAMZA HENDAWI
.c The Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (May 11) - Preparing for a feared Israeli offensive, residents of the Gaza Strip have begun hoarding food, while armed Palestinians patrolled the streets and reinforced ramparts meant to keep Israeli tanks out.

An Israeli incursion into densely packed Gaza was expected in retaliation for a Hamas suicide bombing Tuesday that killed 15 Israelis. The leadership of the Islamic militant group is based in the strip, which was spared during Israel's offensive in the West Bank.

''Our people are steadfast and will continue with all their power to defend our holy cities, Christian and Muslim places,'' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Friday at his West Bank headquarters, responding to a question about a possible incursion into Gaza.

Tanks and troops were massed around Gaza's borders, but Israel TV's Channel 2 reported Friday that Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer decided to postpone the operation because of leaks about army plans. Ben-Eliezer's adviser, Yarden Vatikai, would not confirm or deny the report.

Israel's six-week military offensive in the West Bank effectively ended Friday with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Bethlehem - the last major city they still occupied - after the resolution of a standoff at the Church of the Nativity.

Under the agreement, 13 suspected militants were sent into exile and 26 were released into Gaza, where they fired assault rifles in the air to acknowledge cheers from crowds lining the streets. Seventy-three Palestinian policemen and civilians were set free.

Speaking in Rome, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the aim of a military operation in Gaza would be ''to reach points where we have had centers of terror in a very careful and measured way.''

Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin seemed unconcerned as he was showered with kisses from well-wishers at his neighborhood mosque in Gaza City on Friday. ''I am not afraid, because I only fear God,'' the 70-year-old told The Associated Press.

Gaza, a narrow strip of land on the Mediterranean, was captured by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel handed most of Gaza and parts of the West Bank to Arafat's Palestinian Authority in 1994. But it still controls key roads and several enclaves where an estimated 7,000 Jewish settlers live among some 1.2 million Palestinians.

In the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, resident Hassan Al-Najar squatted on a prayer mat as he read from the Quran, Islam's holy book, and listened to the news on the radio.

The 70-year-old father of 10 spoke proudly of the camp's ''resistance'' to Israel. But he sounded resigned when asked about an Israeli attack on Gaza.

''What can we do? It would be different if we had anti-armor weapons, but we don't,'' Al-Najar said.

Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated areas, and an invasion on a scale similar to Israel's sweep through the West Bank would risk high casualties among civilians and Israeli troops.

The birthplace of the Palestinians' 1987-93 uprising against Israeli rule, Gaza has taken the brunt of Israeli attacks in the early stages of the current 19-month-old Palestinian-Israeli violence.

In the Jebaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, a shantytown of 70,000, residents said Friday they would fight if Israel invaded the camp. In recent weeks, gunmen in the camp have been taking up positions every evening behind sandbags and mounds of debris and rubble.

Last month, Israeli forces left most Palestinian-controlled areas they had entered but remained in Bethlehem waiting for a resolution to the standoff at the church, the traditional site of Jesus' birth.

In recent days, Israeli troops have briefly re-entered West Bank towns, arresting suspected militants and destroying alleged bomb factories before leaving. On Friday, troops entered the town of Tulkarem and demolished the four-story home of a suicide bomber from Hamas.

AP-NY-05-11-02 0323ED

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4) Ten Internationals Arrested by Israeli Army Inside Nativity Church in Bethlehem
Nativity Update: For Immediate Release:
by imc-pal • Friday May 10, 2002 at 06:59 AM
http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/news/2002/05/30828.php

Ten Internationals Arrested by Israeli Army Inside Nativity Church in Bethlehem
May 10 (Bethlehem) Today at 2:40 pm, the Israeli army stormed the Church of the Nativity and arrested ten internationals, who had risked their lives last week to bring food and medical supplies to the priests, monks and Palestinian citizens held inside the church. Those inside had been reduced to eating grass and leaves until the internationals brought in rice, lentils, salt and other essential foodstuffs. One of the internationals, Mary Kelly - a trained nurse, was able to treat the injured and sick who had been denied access to medical treatment until then.

This week, during the negotiations for the release of all the parties inside, Yasser Arafat’s office assured the internationals that the Church officials would protect them from any harm or arrest by the Israelis. However, yesterday, priests from the Latin, Greek and Armenian denominations along with the lawyer for the church, Anton Salman began to pressure the international citizens to leave the Church and turn themselves in to the Israelis. The internationals appealed to President Arafat’s office to intervene and President Arafat himself informed the internationals that they should remain in the Church until the Israeli army withdraws from the city of Bethlehem and that no one would turn them in.

Today, the Church officials ignored President Arafat’s order and mounted so much pressure on them that the Fathers surrounded the internationals inside the Church, insulted them, pushed and shoved several of internationals and locked all of them into a room. According to eyewitnesses, the forced removal of the internationals by the Israeli military and police forces was carried out with church officials in attendance.

At the moment, the internationals are detained on bus in handcuffs and are en route to an unknown location. The lawyer for the internationals has not been informed or provided with any access to them. Four other internationals who were arrested by the Israeli army during the attempt to bring in the food, are being held at Ramle prison by the Israelis and have been hunger striking to protest their deportation since last Thursday. Three are refusing water.

The list of the internationals is as follows:
1. Nauman Zaidi, USA
2. Robert O’Neill, USA
3. Larry Hales, USA
4. Kristen Schurr, USA
5. Alister Hillman, UK
6. Allan Lindgaard, Denmark
7. Stefan Coster, Sweden
8. Erik Alger, Sweden
9. Mary Kelly, Ireland
10. Jacqueline Soohen, Canada

For more information please contact:
+972 (0) 55 840 767

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JERUSALEM (AP) - When new foreigners arrive in the West Bank to demonstrate against Israel, their veteran colleagues quickly split them into two groups: those who need a lesson in how to cope with tear gas and those who need to learn who the Israelis and Palestinians are in the first place.

The small core of foreigners who have prominently protested Israel's offensive against Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank is a loose-knit group of volunteers, divided between those who have been interested in Palestinian rights for years and veteran globalization protesters who have discovered a new cause.

``It's a very fluid situation as far as who we have at any given time,'' said Tony Aschettino, a spokesman for the International Solidarity Movement, which coordinates many of the foreign protesters. ``We've gotten anyone from anarchists to communists to people who are Islamists.''

On Friday, 10 activists from the group refused to leave the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, delaying an end to a tense 39-day standoff and an Israeli troop withdrawal from a city that had been under curfew for more than five weeks.

After several hours, Israeli police in riot gear went inside and forced them out. All 10 activists, including four Americans, were being questioned by police and will be deported, according to police spokesman Rafi Yaffe.

The activists dashed into the church May 2 to bring food to the 123 Palestinians holed up inside, to describe conditions there and to act as human shields to prevent the Palestinians from being harmed.

``We felt that somebody had to do something, we knew how desperate people were,'' said Georgina Reeves, a spokeswoman for the group, who was not in the church.

The activists claimed clergy inside pushed and shoved them Friday before police removed them. But priests said they didn't know anything about the claims, and one accused the activists of desecrating the holy site by smoking and drinking alcohol.

One of those inside, Kristen Schurr, 33, from New York City, told The Associated Press earlier this week she was a veteran of protests for Palestinian rights who tried several times to get into the church before her successful run.

``I've been following the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1987, the first intefadeh,'' she said.

But many others knew little of the conflict before arriving here in recent weeks, though they were battle-scarred veterans of anti-globalization protests, Aschettino said.

``They're like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tear gas, we know, we use it for air freshener at home,''' he said.

Other activists gave them short briefings on the tangled history of the conflict, before sending them out to protest, he said.

Many of the protesters arrive in Israel on their own and find their way to the International Solidarity Movement, an amorphous group of activists. The group includes Americans, Canadians, Britons, Indians and activists from several other countries, Aschettino said.

A 24-year-old from New Jersey who is studying Middle East studies in Cairo, Aschettino came to Israel two weeks ago to try to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians during his spring break.

Now he is a spokesman for the group, though he knows nothing about when or how it was formed.

``Nobody knows anyone. It's very loose,'' he said.

While cracking down on the Palestinian militants, Israel has also tried to neutralize the foreigners. When the 10 activists made it into the church, Israeli forces arrested 13 others who had tried to accompany them.

Nineteen other foreigners, most of them French, were deported from Israel earlier this month after they defied the army and entered the besieged compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

And Israel has prevented approximately 200 foreigners who said they were humanitarian aid volunteers from entering Israel, the government said.

``As long as any foreigners are allowed into Israel or Palestine, we will still be here,'' Aschettino said.

05/11/02 03:03 EDT

6) An Anti-American Boycott Is Growing in the Arab World
May 10, 2002
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
New York Times

CAIRO, May 9 - Doughnuts may not be quite as American as, say, apple pie, but they come close enough to make Samir Nasier, a Saudi fast-food king, nervous.

So nervous, in fact, that Mr. Nasier and his brothers are offering roughly $300,000 to anyone who can prove that their House of Donuts chain has any connection to the United States.

For good measure, their slogan "the American pastry" is being jettisoned, with Mr. Nasier musing aloud that doughnuts might qualify as traditional Saudi fare, given that he started making them 21 years ago.

"We share the same outraged feelings of the Saudi public toward the attitude of the American administration," Mr. Nasier said, speaking by telephone from the Jidda headquarters of his 180-outlet chain. "We are deleting anything that relates to America."

American support for Israel, especially during its recent military offensive in the occupied territories, is driving a grass-roots effort to boycott American products throughout the Arab world. With word spread via the Internet, mosque sermons, fliers and even mobile phone messages, the boycott seems to be slowly gathering force, especially against consumer products.

Purchases of American goods generated by 300 million Arabs form such a small part of American exports that even a widespread boycott would not cause much of a blip. Most trade consists of big ticket items like airplanes, with total American exports to the Middle East amounting to $20 billion in 2000, just 2.5 percent of America's total exports.

But a long boycott could retard the spread of franchises and other products, experts say. Sales at most American fast-food outlets in the Arab world are already off somewhere between 20 and 30 percent on average, American diplomats and industry analysts say, and consumer products face a similar decline.

The boycotts have largely been the effort of individuals and small groups without government involvement, like student organizations and such civic organizations as are allowed to exist. They reflect a growing sentiment that Arabs should distance themselves from the United States, and they want their governments to do likewise.

"They are beginning to feel that shouting slogans in reaction to what the U.S. is doing is not enough," said Kamal Hamdan, a Lebanese economist. A Marlboro smoker, he said that whenever he pulls out a packet, somebody invariably now reproaches him with, "What, still smoking American cigarettes?"

He went on: "They want to design detailed programs against specific goods and services that might involve the banking system, insurance, financial markets. They want to find some pressure points that can have an economic impact."

The attitude is everywhere. Scores of lists circulate suggesting non-American substitutes for things like Lays potato chips and Head & Shoulders shampoo.
The research does not always seem that rigorous; Domino's Pizza was listed as non-American on one list apparently on the strength of sounding Italian.

Al Montazah, a supermarket chain in Bahrain, enforced the boycott on all its roughly 10,000 daily customers by replacing some 1,000 American products with alternatives. A few parents lacking Pampers diapers grumbled, but Abdulmonem al-Meer, the general manager, said the move had boosted sales at some stores.

"I know it will not do much in terms of putting pressure on the American government, but whatever I can do I should do," Mr. Meer said.

The boycott calls have thus far prompted little violence toward American companies, although an empty Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli was bombed overnight Thursday.

Even places like Syria, where American products have long been barred, are trying to get into the act. Billboards around Damascus show horrific scenes of Israeli troops razing Jenin refugee camp, with the slogan, "Boycott American products - Don't be an accomplice," in Arabic and English.

"No Americans Allowed," reads a yardlong wooden sign in the window of Mondo restaurant, incongruously an American-style diner decorated with icons like the Statue of Liberty. "The American people should feel that they have a problem," said Ahmed Diab, the 38-year-old owner.

The Arabs established a boycott office in Damascus in 1951 against companies that did business with Israel, and that kept products like Coca-Cola and Ford vehicles out of the Middle East for decades. But it gradually faded as major markets like Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel.

Boycott support in the region's government-run newspapers has been almost universal, although outright endorsements by senior officials have been rare, given that it could hurt foreign investment. The Syrian government is among the few encouraging the boycott.

More typical is a speech by Sheika Fatima al-Nahyan, the wife of the ruler of Ajman in the United Arab Emirates, telling a women's group, "Start by boycotting all makeup and clothes made by the enemies and prevent children from buying their products, too."

The idea has gained the whole-hearted support of many religious figures, with myriad Friday prayer sermons devoted to the issue. Worshipers at one Jidda mosque were so fired up when they emerged that they converged on a hapless grocer next door to demand that he tear down a Coke sign. He demurred.

Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Muslim cleric on Al Jazeera satellite network, displays a blinking banner on his Web site that reads, "Boycott America from Pepsi cans to Boeing."

Indeed, the flood of e-mail and Web sites sets this effort apart from all previous ones. Calls for boycotting three American corporations - McDonald's, Starbucks and Microsoft - gained rapid momentum through the Internet.

In the case of McDonald's, the rumor erupted that it donated a part of every meal's cost to Israel. Local franchises from Morocco to the Persian Gulf issued statements denying it, stressing that they were locally owned and operated. The Lebanese McDonald's even paid for an instant message to be flashed on 60,000 cellphones, but in some cases the damage had been done.

After a McDonald's opened a year ago at the end of her street in Taif, Saudi Arabia, Lama Muhammad's 5-year-old daughter insisted on one Happy Meal a day. But recently she started watching the news with her mother. "I told her we are not supposed to buy from there because they support Israel," her mother said. The child has not asked for a Happy Meal since. Saudi parents report that their children vie in the schoolyard to list all the American things they avoid.
In the case of Microsoft and Starbucks, word bombarded across the Internet after the Israeli Microsoft branch sponsored a billboard supporting the Israeli Army, as did remarks reportedly made by Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks, at his Seattle synagogue.

A local news article forwarded endlessly quoted him as saying that Jews needed to confront rising anti-Semitism worldwide and that the Palestinians needed to do more to fight terrorism. The remarks about the Palestinians prompted the boycott call, even though the company issued two statements saying Mr. Schultz did not believe terrorism was representative of the Palestinian people and that he thought Israeli and Palestinian states should live together peacefully.

"Everybody is addicted to Starbucks - it's the hip place," said Kholood Khatami, a 25-year-old Saudi journalist. "It's not empty, but it is not as crowded as it used to be. I'm boycotting. Of course, there are some things you cannot avoid - technology and software is all American."

Many companies, especially fast-food restaurants, are fighting back with huge advertising campaigns saying the boycott will only hurt locals. Burger King, in a typical advertisement this week in Saudi Arabia, pointed out that it bought everything from bread to lettuce to mayonnaise from Saudi producers.

Others with American products like Kellogg's breakfast cereal or Hershey's chocolate are hoping that the United States will change its Middle East policy fast enough for old consumer habits to return.

"Our sales are suffering, but I am not concerned about the loss of sales," said Sheik Wahib S. Binzagr, the patriarch of a Jidda merchant family that has imported a wide variety of American goods for decades. He was nonplused to find the clan's own name on the boycott list.

"I laugh from desperation because I cannot do anything about it," he said. "There is damage, and I think efforts should be mobilized to rectify the bad relationship, and then the other things will correct themselves."

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