ISRAEL ARRESTS TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY PALESTINIANS
In another diabolical move in its medieval terror campaign of
collective punishment, Israel soldiers swept through three villages
in the West Bank arresting over two hundred residents. According to
news reports: "The pre-dawn raid on students from Bir Zeit
University angered PLO police commanders and civilian officials.
'This is a display of Israeli brutality...,' said Freij al-Khairi,
head of the Palestinian side of a joint civilian liaison
committee....The Israeli army said soldiers rounded up 200 people
in Bir Zeit and two other villages near Ramallah. Army radio said
260 people were arrested."
This lightning raid on 57 targets is designed to spread
maximum terror and intimidate the Palestinian people. News reports
say that "Troops entered dormitories and private houses...and
gathered students at a football field....Israel also closed
Hebron's Islamic University, the Polytechnic Institute in Hebron
and the College of Science and Technology in the village of Abu
Dees."
In addition the brutal blockade of the Palestinian territories
is continuing. Israel has also banned movement of Palestinians
within the territories not allowing residents of Gaza to travel to
the West Bank. All this state-organized terror is organized under
the pretext of "security" for those who have deprived the
Palestinians of their own lands.
Press reports suggest that even those Palestinians directly
involved in the so-called "peace process" are denouncing Israel for
"lack of respect for the peace accord they signed with the
PLO....Palestinians said the Israeli ban on Gaza students in the
West Bank violated peace deals which defined the area and the Gaza
Strip as one territorial unit." This "peace process" has not put an
end to the Israeli policy of collective punishment. It has not even
put on the agenda the restoration of the land of the Palestinians.
The situation more and more appears that those in the Middle East
who claim to be on the side of the Palestinians have actually
abandoned them.
This state-organized collective punishment against an entire
people must not be allowed to continue. Does Israel have genocide in
store for the Palestinians? All justice and peace-loving people must condemn
these crimes and do everything possible to put an end to them at
once.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
