TEL AVIV The reports from occupied Ramallah speak for themselves. The
live reports I receive by phone or e-mail from friends and colleagues in
Ramallah, Bir-Zeit, Tulkarm and other Palestinian cities are dreadful.

And then, another suicide bomber blasts himself to pieces and takes with
him 14 Israelis, injuring some 40 more at a main Haifa thoroughfare.
Such incidents are now almost daily events in Israel and the occupied
territories. The Israelis killed by Palestinian suicide bombers or
snipers are also victims of Sharon?s war crime policy.

Rumors tell of dozens of Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily executed by
the Israeli forces. Israeli army spokespersons allege that only gunmen
have been killed in gun battles. But medics of the International Red
Cross and United Nations officials have proven that the weapons of the
executed Palestinians showed no signs of being fired.

All Palestinian males aged 16 to 60 had to assemble in several places,
where Israeli ‘security’ personnel select those taken into custody as
suspected ?terrorists.? Electricity, telephone lines and water supply
have been cut in most of the city’s neighborhoods. Food is becoming
scarce for the city’s 200,000 inhabitants.
But there is another side to the story, almost ignored in the mass media:

The many protest actions by the Israeli peace camp. For the first time
in Israeli history, a large group of ‘refuseniks’ reserve officers and
men who refuse to serve in the occupied territories and to take part in
the inhuman oppression of the Palestinian neighbor nation demonstrated
March 29 in front of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?s residence in
Jerusalem. A spokesman for the group, Amit Meshiah, remarked that the
number of signers of the open letter to the defense minister and the
army chief-of-staff, originally 53, has now grown to 357. Adding the
veteran ‘refuseniks’ of the Yesh-Gvul movement, the number is now more
than one thousand. Some 20 of the 357 new ‘refuseniks’ are presently
serving jail terms in military prisons. On the evening of March 30, more
than 500 Israelis demonstrated in front of the Defense Ministry office
in Tel Aviv, while Sharon?s cabinet was in session. The vigil was called
by the Gush-Shalom peace bloc, the Women for Peace Coalition and the
Ta’ayush movement of solidarity with the
Palestinians. When groups of protesters sat down on the usually heavily
traveled Kaplan Street in front of the war ministry’s main gate, police
brutally attacked them. Many demonstrators and one police officer were
injured. After the vigil, most participants marched to the police
headquarters and forced the release of an Arab demonstrator arrested
during the demonstration.

At the same time in Tel Aviv, over a thousand peace activists protested
in front of the prime minister?s residence in Jerusalem, organized by
the Peace Coalition (Peace-Now and others). March 29 saw a protest rally
of many hundreds in downtown Haifa, called by the democratic Hadash
Front, which demanded the unconditional withdrawal of Israel from all
the territories occupied since 1967, as well as the evacuation of all
the Jewish settlements established there.

Now, the Israeli occupation army has declared Ramallah to be a closed
military area, and ordered all non-resident foreign journalists to leave
town. The Israeli Foreign Press Association has published a sharp protest
note, sent to the Defense Ministry and the Government Press Office. A
group of well-known Palestinian and Israeli public figures have issued a
call for world public opinion makers ‘to break the conspiracy of silence
over the true face of the war the Sharon government and army is waging
against the Palestinian people,’ as well as over the protest movement in
Israel. Among the Palestinian signers are Dr. Hannan Ashrawi, Dr. Mustafa
Bargouti, Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi. Among the Israeli co-signers are Prof.
Baruch Kimmerling, Prof. Avi Oz and Prof. Yehuda Shenhav.

As appraised by a number of Israeli media analysts, President Yasser
Arafat’s prestige has risen to new heights among the Palestinian public
and in the whole Arab world. All Palestinians are united as never before
in hailing Arafat as their leader and legally elected president. Many,
also in Israel, estimate that the whole aggressive onslaught upon the
Palestinians will boomerang against Sharon and his war criminal
associates.

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