Occupied Palestine

The Israeli Army yesterday launched a campaign of mass executions against Palestinians. At least 39 members of the Palestinian security forces in occupied Ramallah were killed in cold blood in two separate incidents.

Once again, the United States, remained silent in the face of such outrage.

"The Israelis assassinated around 30 Palestinians last night in a building in central Ramallah. It was a collective assassination," said West Bank Preventive Security Chief Jibreel Rajoub to AFP.

Nine Palestinians were executed earlier in the morning. Palestinians said soldiers executed them in the Islamic Club and adjacent buildings. Four other Palestinians were shot dead by troops in clashes.

The head of the hospital service told AFP yesterday the morgue in Ramallah's central hospital is starting to overflow and doctors had to start putting two bodies in compartments designed for one.


Latest Palestinian Attack

The first bomber who struck yesterday, a member of Izzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, detonated an explosive device in a crowded restaurant in the city of Haifa, killing at least 15 and injuring 35 others.

Another bomber struck in the Jewish settlement of Efrat, south of the West Bank town of Bethlehem injuring four people, settler sources said.

A US journalist was shot and wounded yesterday in Ramallah shortly after the Israeli announcement, two photographers on the scene told AFP.

The correspondent for the Boston Globe daily, a US national, sustained bullet wounds in the back near Ramallah's main square, they said.

He said he had told the United States that Palestinians needed international protection.

Fighting Between Israeli Troops and Palestinians

Soldiers operating within Arafat's Ramallah headquarters waged gunbattles with the Palestinian leader's guards, only meters from the room where Arafat had taken refuge with his aids, Palestinians said.

At least two guards were injured, one of them seriously. Soldiers continued entering building after building in Ramallah, mainly in the commercial city center and the Old City, to search for weapons and activists. They arrested more than 500 people, Palestinians said.

Occupation soldiers announced through loudspeakers that Palestinian inhabitants aged between 15 and 60 must come out of their homes and collect in given gathering locations (usually school yards and public spaces). Many of these people are later arrested them under humiliating conditions including the use of blindfolds, plastic handcuffs and no clothing to protect against the cold weather.

Employees working for international aid organizations, including the Red Cross and the UN relief organization UNRWA, were asked to leave Gaza as soon as possible, sources in Gaza City added.

Despite the fighting, a group of about 30 Western pacifists defied Israeli tanks and marched into the building, where they are vowing to act as a "human shield" around Arafat.

Arafat has issued a defiant statement, telling the US Fox television network that he will never surrender.

He said on Saturday that he had the option of becoming "one of the Palestinian martyrs".

Some 20 tanks were also still besieging the headquarters of West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub, in the southern Ramallah suburb of Beitunya.

In addition to Ramallah, tanks have reoccupied the West Bank town of Beit Jalla, south of Jerusalem vandalizing private and public property. Sporadic shooting was reported in both towns.

They said troops cut off the town's electricity and water supplies before they moved in. Residents said they could hear explosions from occasional shelling and heavy machinegun fire.

The man, who was not identified for fear of Israeli reprisals, told the BBC that Israeli soldiers were raiding and beating civilians and preventing ambulances from taking the wounded to hospitals.

Some of the injured Palestinians were left bleeding for three hours before they were taken to hospitals as Israeli troops shot on three occasions at
ambulances. In one instance, the Israeli army seized an ambulance and three wounded people who were bleeding from gunshot wounds.

And at dawn on Monday, tanks entered Bethlehem, approaching within 500 metres of the Church of the Nativity.

In Qalqilya, the Israeli military said it was conducting searches for militants and weapons in order "to destroy the terrorist infrastructure" in the town.

Power and water supplies were cut off as at least 60 tanks took up position, and there were reported of some exchanges of fire.


Sharons' Demagogy

"Citizens of Israel: the state of Israel is at war, a war against terror," Sharon said in a televised address on Sunday.

"We must fight this terrorism, in an uncompromising war to uproot these savages, to dismantle their infrastructure, because there is no compromise with terrorists."

"This terrorism is activated, coordinated and directed by one man ... Yasser Arafat," he said, calling Arafat "the enemy of the free world."

Arafat has been under siege since the Israeli government declared him an "enemy" on Friday and sent tanks to his headquarters, saying it intended to isolate him after a series of Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis.

Leading Palestinians rejected Sharon's comments.

"This is Sharon's style, nothing new and nothing surprising. But by claiming he will extend his hand for peace after he completes his mission, Sharon is only making a silly joke," said Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abdo Rabbo.