VARIOUS: PALESTINANS PROTEST AGAINST ISRAEL'S TAKEOVER OF PLO HEADQUARTERS IN ARAB EAST JERUSALEM/ PRESIDENT ARAFAT MEETS WITH EUROPEAN ENVOYS IN RAMALLAH / LATEST VICTIMS OF CONFLICT BURIED IN GAZA

Record ID: 400577

  • Title: VARIOUS: PALESTINANS PROTEST AGAINST ISRAEL'S TAKEOVER OF PLO HEADQUARTERS IN ARAB EAST JERUSALEM/ PRESIDENT ARAFAT MEETS WITH EUROPEAN ENVOYS IN RAMALLAH / LATEST VICTIMS OF CONFLICT BURIED IN GAZA
  • Date: 11th August 2001
  • Summary: (W3) JERUSALEM (AUGUST 11, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. WS: PALESTINIANS STANDING OUTSIDE ORIENT HOUSE 0.02 2. SV: SCUFFLES BETWEEN POLICE AND DEMONSTRATORS 0.07 3. SV: POLICE WITH TRUNCHEONS FORCING DEMONSTRATOR AWAY 0.12 (W4) JERUSALEM (AUGUST 11, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 4. VARIOUS OF SCUFFLES, POLICE PUSHING PEO
  • Embargoed: 26th August 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM / RAMALLAH, WEST BANK / GAZA
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Reuters ID: LVA4GDDF4KH6G3E3SQ4429IYYAKL
  • Story Text: Scores of Palestinian demonstrators have protested
    against the takeover of Palestinian headquarters in Arab East
    Jerusalem by Israel in response to a Palestinian suicide
    bombing in the Jewish western part of the city.

    As Palestinian buried the latest victims of the conflict
    diplomatic efforts continued to contain the crisis, which in
    the past week has reached heightened bloodshed.


    Israeli police seized Orient House, the main East
    Jerusalem office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation
    (PLO), and reoccupied the Palestinian governor's building in
    the nearby village of Abu Dis in a bloodless overnight raid on
    Friday (August 10).

    The moves were a politically charged reply to a suicide
    bombing that killed 16 people, including the bomber, and
    wounded about 100 at a pizza parlour packed with families on
    Thursday.

    Scores of angry demonstrators gathered around Orient House
    early on Saturday (August 11) morning protesting against the
    handover. Scuffles between police and demonstrators broke out
    after police blocked the road leading to the Orient House
    preventing the protesters from approaching it.

    Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi joined the
    demonstrators and soon after her arrival to the scene found
    herself involved in scuffles with police barring entrance to
    the Orient House.

    But she said the Palestinians were determined to continue
    their protest.

    "We will continue (demonstrating) every day... They (the
    Israelis) have used force, they will use force, they used
    force earlier. We use civil and civilised action, we are
    unarmed, we have the right to go to the Orient House, we have
    the right to go anywhere we want in Palestine, including
    Jerusalem," Ashrawi said.

    Israel's crackdown was a direct challenge to Palestinian
    claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

    Israel has long said the Palestinian Authority illegally
    used Orient House to host foreign diplomats, and had
    threatened to close it for years. The Palestinians say they
    are entitled to use the offices under interim peace
    agreements.

    Differences over the future of Jerusalem lie at the core
    of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and were a prime cause of
    the failure of the two sides to reach a peace deal last year.

    Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War
    and annexed it in a move not recognised internationally. It
    views the entire city as its eternal and indivisible capital.

    The Palestinians want the eastern part of the city to be
    the capital of a future state, and Orient House has served as
    their municipal and symbolic centre.

    In Ramallah, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met
    European officials and, at a separate meeting, the Russian
    Middle East envoy. Both meetings focused on the on-going
    violence and escalation of the conflict.

    International pressure has mounted on Arafat and Israeli
    Prime Minister Ariel Sharon over the past several days to halt
    the violence, which has killed more than 650 people, before it
    spun out of control.

    In Gaza Palestinians buried the latest victims of the
    conflict. Thousands took to the streets for the funerals of
    Maher Afaneh, 27, and Mohammad Saqqa, 20, killed by Israeli
    troops on Friday (August 10) during stone-throwing clashes
    near the Karni commercial crossing.

    Their deaths followed a week of heightened violence inside
    Israel and Palestinian territories, including a Palestinian
    suicide attack in Jerusalem on Thursday that killed at least
    16 people and a bloodless Israeli takeover of Palestinian
    posts in Arab East Jerusalem.





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