MIDDLE EAST: ISRAELI TROOPS DETAIN SEVERAL PALESTINIANS IN WEST BANK VILLAGE OF DURA/ 38TH ANNIVERSARY OF FATAH MOVEMENT CELEBRATED IN GAZA

Record ID: 645881

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: ISRAELI TROOPS DETAIN SEVERAL PALESTINIANS IN WEST BANK VILLAGE OF DURA/ 38TH ANNIVERSARY OF FATAH MOVEMENT CELEBRATED IN GAZA
  • Date: 31st December 2002
  • Summary: (W5) DURA VILLAGE, WEST BANK (JANUARY 1, 2003) (REUTERS) LV PALESTINIAN STONE-THROWERS IN STREET, TYRE BURNING; SV ISRAELI SOLDIER AIMING RIFLE (2 SHOTS) MV PALESTINIAN YOUTH THROWING STONES; MV ISRAELI SOLDIER AIMING TEAR-GAS GUN AT CROWD OF STONE-THROWERS; PAN STONE THROWERS RUNNING AWAY, PAN: STUN GRENADE FIRING; SLV ISRAELI SOLDIERS GUARDING DETAINEES (6 SHOTS) (W5) GAZA (JANUARY 1, 2003) (REUTERS) MV/CU MASKED GUNMEN QUEUED UP (2 SHOTS) LV DOZENS OF MASKED GUNMEN MARCHING; HOLDING FLAGS SCU MASKED PALESTINIAN HOLDING KORAN AND MAKING PEACE SIGN WITH HANDS; SV MASKED GUNMEN SHOOTING RIFLE IN AIR (2 SHOTS) (W5) KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA (JANUARY 1, 2003) (REUTERS) SLV/SV/MV: PEOPLE EXAMINING RUBBLE OF HOUSE OF HAMAS MILITANT DEMOLISHED/ YOUNG BOY STANDING IN RUBBLE (3 SHOTS) SV MASKED PEOPLE MARCHING, WAVING FLAGS SCU PALESTINIAN CHILD WITH HAMAS HEADBAND, MAKING PEACE SIGN AND HOLDING ASSAULT RIFLE; LAS MAN WITH EXPLOSIVE BELT MARCHING; MEN HOLDING ROCKET LAUNCHERS AND GUNMEN MARCHING (3 SHOTS) SV TWO PALESTINIAN CHILDREN HOLDING ASSAULT RIFLES; MV MASKED MEN MARCHING; SV PALESTINIAN WOMAN HOLDING RIFLE, MARCHING (2 SHOTS) WS: THOUSANDS ATTENDING RALLY/ ARMED MEN WALKING THROUGH CROWD (2 SHOTS) SCU MISSILE LAUNCHER; MV ARMED TEENAGERS MARCHING THROUGH CROWD; PAN OF CROWD (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 15th January 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SHATI CAMP AND KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA/DURA VILLAGE, WEST BANK/ JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAD17A9AIFQ27432W5NH9OZ1Q7S
  • Story Text: Israeli soldiers have detained several Palestinian men in the West Bank village of Dura, where youths pelted the troops with stones after the detention.
    In Gaza, Palestinians marked the 38th anniversary of the foundation of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, while overnight Israeli forces destroyed the house of a Hamas militant as a message to suicide bombers to halt attacks.
    Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has fired a deputy cabinet minister in a bid to contain damage from a vote-buying scandal, and Israel's elections commission has voted to bar an Arab party and its leader from the poll.
    Dozens of Palestinian youth confronted Israeli troops with stones in the village of Dura near the West Bank city of Hebron Wednesday (January 1, 2003).
    At least one Palestinian was wounded during the clash and dozens were detained by Israeli troops.
    In Shati camp in Gaza, some 500 members of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement marched in a rally marking 38 years of foundation.
    In Khan Younis in Gaza, some 25,000 Fatah supporters attended a rally celebrating the anniversary.
    Masked and armed members of Fatah armed groups held a military parade in which they carried anti-tank rockets, RPGs and assorted rifles.
    Speakers vowed to continue the uprising and the fight against Israel and renew loyalty to Arafat.
    Also in the Gaza Strip, city of Khan Younis, Israeli forces destroyed the house of a Hamas militant overnight as a message to suicide bombers to halt attacks, the army said on Wednesday (January 1).
    The army said it found pipe bombs and weapons in the ruins of the house forces razed in Gaza.
    Palestinian witnesses in Khan Younis said 10 Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers were involved in the operation to blow up the house of Hamas militant Yassin al-Agha, who was killed by Israeli troops last month. They said the forces withdrew from the Palestinian-ruled city afterwards.
    Palestinians and human rights groups call Israel's house demolition policy a form of "collective punishment" that violates international humanitarian law.
    The army says the measure is used to deter Palestinians from joining ranks of militants behind a suicide bombing campaign that has killed hundreds of Israelis since a Palestinian revolt for statehood began in September 2000 after peace talks stalled.
    In an increasingly chaotic build-up to a national ballot scheduled for January 28, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Tuesday (December 31) fired a deputy cabinet minister in a bid to contain damage from a vote-buying scandal, and Israel's electIons commission has voted to bar an Arab party and its leader from the poll.
    Sharon dismissed Deputy National Infrastructure Minister Naomi Blumenthal for refusing to answer police questions about alleged fraud surrounding a recent Likud party election, aides said.
    Sharon had vowed publicly to expel any party members tainted by a scandal swirling around the Likud's selection of its list of top parliamentary candidates.
    Blumenthal, 59, the most senior Likud politician summoned by fraud squad investigators, had invoked her right to silence on Sunday (December 29), declining to answer police questions.
    Her chauffeur was detained last week on suspicion of involvement in the alleged scam.
    Sharon demanded a written explanation from Blumenthal of why she refused to co-operate and was not satisfied with her answer.
    Although Sharon had the power to remove Blumenthal from her government post, news reports said she will still be able to run for the Knesset on the Likud list.
    Police are investigating allegations that Likud activists used cash and favours to bribe members of the party's 2,940-strong Central Committee, which picked candidates in early December. Several activists have been arrested.
    Opinion polls show the right-wing Likud heavily favoured to win the election, giving Sharon a second term as prime minister.
    But the vote-buying scandal has eroded Likud's once-commanding lead built on public support for Sharon's tough crackdown on Palestinians waging a 27-month-old uprising for independence. Adding to the political turmoil, Israel's Central Elections Committee disqualified lawmaker Asmi Bishara and his Arab Israeli Balad party Wednesday (January 1).
    Israel's attorney general had accused them of opposing Israel's existence and backing "terror" groups.
    Bishara, 46, a member of parliament who mounted a bid for prime minister in 1999, was the second Israeli Arab legislator to be banned in as many days. By contrast, an ex-leader of the outlawed Jewish Kach group is being allowed to run.
    "The atmosphere that I can see in the Arab sector is that the majority will not vote if Balad is banned and not because of support for or sympathy towards Balad...but because people will feel that someone has emptied their votes from substance"
    said Israeli parliament member Asmi Bishara.
    Israel's Supreme Court is expected to hear appeals next week and will have the final say.
    The latest decisions of the 42-member committee were certain to deepen resentment among Israel's minority Arabs, whose sense of alienation has been aggravated by more than two years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
    Meanwhile, a team of Jordanian experts has begun repairing a bulge in the ancient stone wall of a Jerusalem shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims.
    The Jordanian engineers are shoring up the crumbling southern wall of the Temple Mount complex revered by Jews as the site of King Solomon's Temple and by Muslims as the site where the Prophet Mohammed departed on his night flight to heaven. Muslims refer to the ancient site as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.
    Repairs on the site have been delayed for over a year by a dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority-appointed Muslim religious trust over who should fix the 200-square-metre bulge in the wall.
    Israel says the protrusion was caused by illegal construction carried out by the Waqf in the heart of the ancient complex, constructed over two thousand years ago by King Herod. The Muslim trust attributed the bulge to wear and tear on the ancient stones.
    The Jerusalem shrine, one of the monotheistic world's most holy sites, proved to be an insurmountable stumbling block at a U.S.-sponsored peace summit in July 2000 which ended in deadlock shortly before a Palestinian revolt for statehood began.
    Israel captured East Jerusalem, where the shrine is located, in the 1967 Middle East war and declared all of Jerusalem its indivisible and eternal capital, a claim that is not recognised internationally.
    The Waqf, or Islamic trust, has said the Jordanian engineers would spend two days doing preparatory work before returning in mid-January to carry out the bulk of the restoration.
    According to a preliminary report drawn up by another Jordanian team that took samples from the site in October, the damage is being caused by water dripping into the wall over a period of years, a local newspaper reported on Monday.
    It said the Jordanian team found the wall was in no immediate danger of collapse but that stones in the bulge should be replaced while others nearby would need reinforcement.
    The bulge is mostly in an upper level of the Herodian wall that was rebuilt during the Ottoman period.
    The lower strata of the shrine was built in the Herodian period, more than 2,000 years ago, when the second biblical Jewish temple stood on the mount.
    Muslims revere the site as the al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, where the Koran says the Prophet Mohammed rode to the heavens on a magical horse during his Night Journey.
    Israeli archaeologists have said the Jordanian involvement was a bandaid to a more serious problem of continued unsupervised work by the Waqf on the interior of the complex.
    Over the past several years, the Waqf has renovated a large space within the base of the site to accommodate an immense underground mosque. The work has included the removal and dumping beyond the ancient wall of tons of earth which Israeli archaeologists say contain valuable archaeological finds from the heart of the ancient complex.
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