Youth stripped naked, made to walk like dog
NABLUS (West Bank) — An eight-year-old Palestinian child was shot dead yesterday when Israeli troops in a jeep opened fire on a crowd of stone-throwing youths in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, which is under army occupation and curfew, Palestinian medics said.
Jihad Faqih was standing in the street when he was fatally shot in the chest as the army fired at a crowd of youths in the centre of the city where clashes erupt almost daily between army patrols enforcing the curfew and defiant Palestinian youngsters.
His death raises the toll for the two-year-old intifada to 2,716 people, including 1,994 Palestinians and 672 Israelis.
Eight other Palestinians were wounded, two of them seriously, in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the city, Palestinian security sources said.
A 39-year-old woman and an 18-year-old man were seriously injured by Israeli tankfire as teenagers and children threw stones at armoured vehicles, the sources said, adding that no Palestinian fighters were involved.
Meanwhile, three Israeli soldiers forced a Palestinian man to strip naked at gunpoint and walk like a dog in a West Bank city under curfew, Palestinian witnesses said yesterday.
A Reuters photographer snapped Yasser Sharaf, 25, standing naked in a cold, muddy street in Nablus on Sunday as two men were handing him clothes to put on and two Israeli armoured vehicles were pulling away from the scene.
Sharaf declined to comment yesterday about the incident.
Israeli military sources denied that Sharaf was forced to strip, saying checks with soldiers involved determined that he had been ordered only to raise his shirt to show whether he was carrying explosives.
“When he saw members of the media in the area, he decided to undress completely,” a military source said.
Witnesses including two Palestinian firemen said Israeli soldiers stopped Sharaf after spotting him walking in a street in violation of curfew and, “pointing their rifles at him, ordered him to start stripping”.
“Yasser told them he had nothing to hide but they continued shouting and readied their rifles to shoot,” fireman Samir El Lifdawi said by telephone from Nablus.
“They forced Yasser to take off all his clothes including his underwear...They ordered him to walk like a dog and then he burst into tears,” Lifdawi said.
He said he watched the incident unfold from a fire station a few metres away. A colleague, Sultan Al Minawi, provided the same account.
“He kept crying and was in a very stressful situation... “Many residents, including women, watched him and he was very embarrassed,” Minawi said.
Palestinian civilians have often complained of being humiliated and abused by Israeli troops who have reoccupied Palestinian-administered West Bank cities to combat an uprising for statehood spearheaded by armed fighters. The army says strict controls on Palestinian residents are necessary because militants hide among the population and wear civilian clothing when they carry out martyrdom attacks.
Scenes of Palestinians rolling up their shirts to prove they are not hiding bomb belts have become frequent since the Israeli Army swept into West Bank cities in June after a spate of attacks which have killed scores of Israeli civilians.
Sunday’s incident in Nablus would be the first time a Palestinian was reported to have been ordered to strip naked in a security operation. Palestinian civilians have complained of being ordered to strip to their underwear at roadblocks.
QUARTET MEET: The quartet of Middle East peace mediators will meet in Washington on December 20 in advance of Israeli and Palestinian elections expected early in 2003, the US State Department said yesterday.
The quartet groups the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. They will meet at ministerial level, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. Jordan said last week that the meeting would announce the peace plan on which the quartet has been working for the past six months but US officials have played down the prospects of reaching agreement on a document before the elections.
The last ministerial meeting of the quartet was in New York in September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
A statement issued at the time said the mediators were working on a three-phase plan leading to an independent Palestinian state in a few years’ time.
But negotiations on the plan, known as the “road map,” appear to have been more difficult than originally expected.
Israel has asked the United States to put off work on the plan until after it holds elections in late January next year.
It has also opposed the inclusion in the plan of a timeline diplomatic jargon for a timetable saying when each side must take specified steps in favour of the other.
US officials have started to call the plan a “living” or “evolving” document, parts of which can be implemented before the parties agree to the whole.
Boucher said yesterday that it was impossible to make progress on the peace plan as long as Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets continue unabated. — AFP, Reuters
<A HREF="">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
