News, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Israeli occupation forces kill a Palestinian boy, demolish houses in Rafah
Agencies
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 31 October 2003 — As the cycle of violence continued unabated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a row between the Israeli Army and government over how to end it was growing deeper yesterday.
A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli troops in the Nablus refugee camp of Balata on Wednesday night, Palestinian medical sources said. The soldiers opened fire when the boy threw stones at their jeep inside the camp.
In further overnight unrest, the Israeli Army staged an incursion into the already battered southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, Palestinian security sources said.
Bulldozers backed by armored cars demolished a house near the Israeli-controlled border with Egypt, the sources said.
Thousands of Palestinians workers were allowed to cross into Israel on Wednesday for the first time since an Oct. 4 suicide bombing.
The move followed pressure from top brass, who expressed fears that the hardships suffered by the Palestinian population would lead to severe unrest.
League chief Amr Moussa told a US envoy yesterday that the Arab world was angry at what he described as Washington’s pro-Israeli bias, a League spokesman said in Cairo.
Moussa told US Ambassador David Welch that “there were feelings of anger and frustration in the Arab world because of the deterioration of the situation in the occupied territories and the American bias in favor of Israel,” spokesman Hisham Yussef told reporters.
Welch conveyed to Moussa Washington’s “determination to move toward a (resumption) of the talks” between Israel and the Palestinians, “on the condition that security” be restored.
The US envoy said implementation of a US-backed road map for peace, which targets the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, depended “on the behavior of the two parties.”
A senior Pentagon adviser dismissed yesterday as a “very bad idea” an unofficial Middle East peace plan launched by a group of Israeli and Palestinian politicians.
The so-called “Geneva initiative” was unveiled earlier this month as the internationally backed road map was stalled by continued violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
“It’s a very bad idea,” Richard Perle said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Le Temps in which he also sharply criticized Switzerland for lending support to the bid. “This intervention is totally inappropriate. By lending its encouragement to a group of citizens who only represent themselves, Switzerland is adding to the chaos,” he said.
“Why doesn’t (Swiss foreign minister) Micheline Calmy-Rey intervene in the Basque problem (in Spain)?... Why doesn’t she do the same in Northern Ireland? That would be ridiculous,” Perle added.
“Israel is a democracy with a democratically-elected government. What would one say if (Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon indirectly got involved in a dispute between the Swiss federal government and a canton?” he said.
Switzerland says it has only acted as a “facilitator” in the initiative drawn up by opposition left-wing Israeli and prominent Palestinians, which is expected to be concluded in mid to late November.
Israel actively opposes the plan and said it will only follow the deadlocked road map aimed at ending the bloody three-year conflict with the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 with security guarantees for Israel.
According to available details, the Geneva plan calls for shared sovereignty over disputed areas of the holy city of Jerusalem and would grant the Palestinians 97.5 percent of the West Bank. In exchange, Palestinian refugees would waive their right of return to areas now incorporated in the state of Israel as it was founded in 1948.
In another development, the Israeli the police said that a section of the controversial separation barrier Israel is erecting will run along the main road between Jerusalem and Ramallah, isolating the Holy City from some of its northern Palestinian neighborhoods.
In an interview published yesterday by the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, Jerusalem police chief Micky Levy said the barrier would run between the Al-Ram checkpoint guarding Jerusalem’s northern exit and Qalandya, the main checkpoint into Ramallah.
“The separation barrier will be erected in conformity with the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. The neighborhoods to the east are in the West Bank and those to the west in the Jerusalem municipality,” Levy told the newspaper. Levy said that the residents of neighborhoods such as Al-Ram and Al-Dahyeh, who hold blue Israeli ID cards, will then only be able to enter Jerusalem through the Qalandya checkpoint. The Al-Ram checkpoint will be dismantled, the police chief added.
On the sensitive issue of Jerusalem, they also point out that the barrier will separate Palestinian neighborhoods in the West Bank from other Palestinian neighborhoods in areas of Jerusalem. The route mentioned by Levy will leave 60,000 Jerusalem ID holders on the other side of the barrier.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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