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Israelis
Turn On "Provocative" Foreigners, Seven Foreigners Wounded
By Israeli Fire
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| Foreigner
activist receives treatment at a hospital after being injured
after Israeli soldiers opened fire on him |
BETHLEHEM,
West Bank, April 1 (News Agencies) - Under mounting world pressure to
end their offensive on the West Bank, Israeli occupation forces turned
on foreigners Monday, wounding seven pacifist demonstrators and firing
on a car full of journalists.
The
Israelis found themselves playing cat and mouse with some 500
pacifists who had flocked to the West Bank in support of the
Palestinians and their besieged President Yasser Arafat, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Jerome
Lallemand, an activist for the group International Civic Campaign for
the Protection of the Palestinian People, said they were spread out in
various areas, mainly Ramallah, where Arafat is penned up, Bethlehem
and Beit Jala.
He
was speaking after Israeli occupation troops fired at a
pro-Palestinian demonstration of some 60 people in Beit Jala near
here, wounding seven foreigners and a Palestinian cameraman, according
to the organizers.
The
group Solidarity International said a 26-year-old Australian woman was
hit in the stomach with shrapnel during the incident in the town of
Beit Jala and was rushed into surgery. A Frenchman, 54, was shot in
the head, AFP reported.
The
other foreigners wounded were two Britons, two Americans and a
Japanese, the group said. The one Palestinian wounded was a cameraman
for Associated Press Television (APTV).
"An
Israeli tank blocked their way and Israeli soldiers opened fire in
their direction," Lallemand told AFP. He said the wounded were
taken to the hospital in Beit Jala.
An
Israeli occupation army spokesman said they were investigating the
incident but expressed little regret, AFP said.
Foreign
journalists also came under attack.
Israeli
fire hit a car full of Western journalists in Ramallah on Monday,
causing no casualties, they told AFP. A U.S. journalist, Anthony
Shadid of the Boston Globe, was shot and wounded Sunday.
A
group of around 50 pacifists was meanwhile seen moving into three
refugee camps in Bethlehem in a pre-emptive move to protect the
Palestinian residents from a possible Israeli occupation army
incursion.
The
group split itself between the three Palestinian refugee camps of
Dheishe, Aida and Al Aza.
A
second group of 50 activists attempting to enter Bethlehem was turned
away by the Israeli occupation army at a checkpoint just north of the
city, an AFP correspondent said.
It
was not clear whether they were from the same group of international
peace activists which made their way into the besieged office of
Arafat on Sunday.
More
than 40 pacifists – mainly French but also a number of Italians,
Britons, Swiss and Americans – brazened their way past Israeli
occupation troops and made their way into Arafat's headquarters.
Eleven
who came out later, including French anti-globalization activist Jose
Bove, were arrested and slated for expulsion, Israeli officials said.
Francois
Weiser, of the France-Palestine Solidarity Association, said he and 34
other pacifists, most of them French, spent the night in Arafat's
headquarters in the city of Ramallah after marching in to see him
Sunday.
He
said they plan to form a "human shield" in case the Israelis
try to take the building where Arafat has been penned in since the
offensive was launched early Friday.
One
of them, Claude Leostic, told the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television
station Monday, "We are determined to stay with president Yasser
Arafat until the end of the attack and the withdrawal of Israeli
military forces from Ramallah."
Meanwhile
a score of French and Swiss pacifists toured the Gaza Strip, viewing
the human and material results of the 18-month Palestinian uprising
and trying to dialogue with Israeli troops guarding roadblocks.
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