From Occupied Palestine

Declining to intervene: Israel's Supreme Court and the Occupied Territories
JONATHAN COOK
Middle East Report, 4 August 2003

In its annual report issued in July 2003, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) painted a familiar yet surprising picture of Israeli army maltreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. A wide range of army practices -- from house-to-house searches in villages to "targeted killings" of Palestinian militants -- came in for harsh criticism, unusually harsh by the standards of the mainstream human rights group. "Most of the abuses occur not as a result of operational necessity on the part of the army," the report continues, "but from vindictiveness on the part of soldiers, who receive implicit approval to denigrate the dignity, life and liberty of innocent Palestinians." ACRI goes on to cite army data revealing that most incidents of possible abuse, including most shooting deaths, are never investigated. Between the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 and June 2003, the army says it opened 362 internal investigations and brought charges in 46 cases, the majority of them relating to theft of Palestinian property. Only eight soldiers were indicted in shooting incidents. To date, not one has been convicted.

Israel, the US and "Targeted Killings"
CHRIS TOENSING and IAN URBINA
Middle East Report, 17 February 2003

Six Hamas militants killed in a car explosion on February 16 were assassinated by Israel, Hamas claims. While Israel denies involvement in the deaths, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on February 17 that Israel will assassinate other members of the military wing of Hamas as part of its planned lengthy incursion into Palestinian-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip to avenge four soldiers killed when Hamas blew up a tank near the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. Israel's assassination policy is openly declared.

Israel's clampdown masks system of control
ADAM HANIEH
Middle East Report, February 14, 2003

Citing "many intelligence reports" of possible attacks on civilians inside Israel, on February 10 Israel imposed "complete closure" upon Palestinian towns and villages in the Occupied Territories for the duration of the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, which ends on February 14. This measure, last taken on the day of the Israeli elections on January 28, barred Palestinians from traveling between towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and sharply curtailed the extended family visits that are an important part of the Eid. But Israel's latest clampdown did not take away Palestinian freedom of movement, as many news reports posited, because that freedom has barely existed for nearly 12 months. "Complete closure" came on top of the closure in effect since early in the second Palestinian intifada that prevents most Palestinians from entering Israel, and a maze of "internal" closures from which there is rarely a holiday.

Building a wall, sealing the occupation
ISABELLE HUMPHRIES
Middle East Report, 29 September 2002

Yet another siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah abated on September 29, as the Palestinian leader again emerged with his previously sagging popularity bolstered by confinement at the hands of Israel. Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza broke Israeli-imposed curfews on September 28 to mark the second anniversary of the Palestinian uprising and demonstrate for Arafat's freedom of movement. While the media has focused on Israel's defiance of international pressure to end the Ramallah siege, deadly Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip and further incidents of Palestinian violence in the Occupied Territories, Israel has proceeded largely unnoticed with the construction of a wall in the West Bank, an alteration of the landscape of occupation which has far more serious implications for the long-term future of the conflict than the latest "cycle of violence."

West Bank curfews: Politics by other means
ADAM HANIEH
Middle East Report, 24 July 2002

The Israeli F-16 strike early on July 23 that killed Hamas leader Salah Shehada and 15 Palestinian civilians in the crowded Gaza neighborhood of al-Daraj put the roiling Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly back in the Western headlines.

MERIP primer on the uprising in Palestine
MIDDLE EAST RESEARCH AND INFORMATION PROJECT
Spring 2002

On April 4, George W. Bush dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell to Israel-Palestine to attempt to stop the "storm of violence" that has kept the Middle East on American front pages throughout the spring of 2002.

Closure: The daily reality of Israel's occupation
CHRIS SMITH
Middle East Report 27 August 2001

As soon as the Israeli army jeep disappears around the bend, a dusty minivan emerges from the grape fields outside Beit Ummar, a farming town in the southern West Bank. Revving the engine as he accelerates into the turn, the driver leans out the window and yells, "Go! Go!" On cue, eight Palestinian workers bolt from their hiding places in the bushes and run alongside the van, jumping in as it tears down the empty highway. After just a few hundred yards, the van turns back into the fields to evade an Israeli armored personnel carrier at a checkpoint down the road. To get here, the van had followed a tortuous dirt path over the hills from Bethlehem -- in which a five-minute drive became an hour-long journey. The return trip would be just as grueling.