Democratic Palestine : 22 (ص 4)
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- Democratic Palestine : 22 (ص 4)
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Occupied Palestine
Continuing Mass Uprising
Despite the wave of arrests that continued after December’s mass
uprising, Palestinians persisted in expressing their rejection of the
Zionist occupation, and their solidarity with their brothers in the
besieged camps in Lebanon. By February, a full-scale mass uprising
had again spread throughout the occupied territories.
On January 16th, the national in-
stitutions in Duheisheh camp in the oc-
cupied West Bank issued a statement
denouncing the occupation forces’
harassment of their camp which they
said had become a «military base and a
closed ghetto.» The statement noted
that the occupation authorities had ar-
rested thirty people in the three
preceding weeks. Many were arrested,
held for the customary 18 days, then
released, only to be rearrested. The
statement described how the occupation
army had brutalized the camp residents
by rounding up men between the ages
of 12 and 60 in the camp’s center and
forcing them to stand naked with their
hands in the air. This situation con-
tinued; four. Duheisheh youth were
snatched from their homes and _ ar-
rested, with no reason given, on
January 23rd.
The same harassment was going on in
other places, as scores of youth were
arrested, usually without any explana-
tion, during the month of January.
Students were especially hard hit.
Around 20 Bir Zeit University students
were taken from their homes in the
night and placed under arrest without
reason in the weeks preceding the stu-
dent council elections. In late 1986, the
Zionist authorities had announced the
opening of a new detention center for
youth, in the occupied Gaza Strip,
dubbed Ansar II. In January, reports
of torture began to leak out, promising
that this center was to be the counter-
part of Al Faraah in the West Bank,
notorious as a torture factory for
churning out confessions, having been
established to quell the revolutionary
spirit of Palestinian youth under oc-
cupation.
PROTESTING
DEPORTATION
Regardless of the tightened iron fist,
there were intermittent demonstrations
4
in January. Mass anger reached a
height in the Gaza Strip on January
24th, after the expulsion by the Israeli
authorities of Mohammad Dahlan, 26
year old resident of Rafah refugee
camp near Khan Younis, and history
student at the Islamic University in
Gaza. There was a general strike in
Khan Younis, closing all shops and
secondary schools. Demonstrators
stormed the municipal building and
post office. The occupation forces
reinforced their ranks and opened fire
on the demonstrators, while spraying
tear gas to disperse them. Shopowners
who did not reopen were threatened
with imprisonment.
At a press conference called in oc-
cupied Jerusalem by the Committee
Confronting the Iron Fist, to protest
the deportation, Attorney Khalid Al
Kidri explained that the Zionist
authorities had not had _ substantial
evidence against Dahlan to merit con-
viction in the Gaza military court, for
which reason they had earlier released
him. The attorney voiced his suspicions
that Dahlan had dropped his appeal of
the deportation order under pressure
from the security forces. The same
misgivings had been expressed by the
progressive Israeli lawyer, Lea Tsemel,
before the deportation, while Dahlan
was detained in the solitary confine-
ment cells of Ashkelon prison, usually
used by the Shin Bet for interrogation.
Schools and national institutions in
the Gaza Strip continued to strike in
protest of the deportation, and the
masses repeatedly took to the streets in
the succeeding days. On January 25th,
a military vehicle was destroyed by
demonstrators. Israeli troops again
opened fire on the people. On January
29th, Israeli soldiers fired on a
demonstration in Khan Younis, injur-
ing three Palestinians. The Israeli army
claimed that only one of them was shot
by its own forces and that the other two
injuries came from an «unknown
source». One of the three, a 17 year
old, later died from his wounds. Again
on February Ist, these «unknowns»-be
they the occupation army, armed
Zionist settlers or Shin Bet agents, were
on the move. Twelve Palestinian girls
were injured when masked men sprayed
acid inside a Gaza high school.
On February 2nd, the occupation
authorities closed Deir Al Balah
secondary schoo] for three days after
demonstrations protesting Israeli op-
pression. In Khan Younis, shops closed
as demor Strators raised the Palestinian
flag on a post in front of the mosque.
The occupation army was highly visible
in the streets throughout the Gaza
Strip.
AL NAJAH CLOSED AGAIN
On February 9th, residents of Balata
refugee camp near Nablus, in the oc-
cupied West Bank, staged a large
demonstration against the Israeli iron
fist policy. Palestinians waved their
flag of red, green and black - forbidden
colors under occupation - while others
burned tires and threw stones at the
occupation troops. The camp was
besieged and a curfew imposed after the
Zionist forces had fired into the crowds
indiscrimunantly, injuring four camp
residents. One of them was a 13 year
old girl, who was shot in the back,
another a 14 year old boy.
The same day in Nablus, hundreds of
students at Al Najah University
demonstrated in protest of the Amal
gangs’ siege of the Palestinian camps in
Lebanon. The students erected
roadblocks to keep the occupation
troops out of their campus, and threw
stones at the encroaching military
patrols. Six students were wounded
when the Zionists opened fire. Al Na-
jah was ordered closed for one month
by the military government, having on-
ly been reopened in mid-January after
closures due to the mass uprising in - هو جزء من
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