PALESTINE: ISRAELI GAS ATTACKS TAKE HEALTH TOLL ON WEST BANK VILLAGERS
by David Bloom
Witnesses and officials in Jayyous, a farming village in the occupied West
Bank, say a series of unprovoked tear-gas attacks by Israeli troops in
recent weeks have taken a grave toll on residents' health. The attacks come
with a further tightening of Israeli military control of the town.
Shareef Omar Khaled of the Jayyous Land Defense committee noted that even
though Israel's "separation wall" has now completely cut off the town from
its agricultural lands, the Israeli army has clamped a still tighter noose
on Jayyous, imposing a checkpoint at the town's entrance, and controlling
all traffic coming in and out. Shareef reports that soldiers frequently
enter to the village and throw tear gas, and that many residents have
developed respiratory problems.
Shareef Omar reports that pregnant women in the village are suffering
miscarriages as a likely result of the gas. Animals are suffering
unprecedented spontaneous abortions at a greater rate, with reports that 30
sheep recently aborted because of a gas canister dropped on a farmer's
barn.
An international witness recently visiting Jayyous reports that two to
three times a day in the week prior to his April 28 arrival, Israeli
soldiers drove into town, shooting tear gas and harrassing residents. The
witness reports that "soldiers had teargassed the town's school, forcing
children to evacuate their classrooms and sending one female teacher to the
hospital for a day." Villagers report that such incursions have worsened
since the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza
one month earlier.
Another international volunteer reports on the effects of the gas on a
developmentally disabled young man, named Loay, who was hospitalized, and
lost ten kilos in 10 days. "It was through his blood tests that the doctors
informed him that his difficulties stem from the effects of the tear gas.
There is hope that Loay will fully recover, but not without physical
therapy and time."
On March 28, the same international reported: "Two nights ago, they used
more than 30 tear gas cannisters. It has been reported than an infant was
badly affected and had to be taken to the emergency room. It was also
reported that women had to go to the small clinic here in the village the
morning after this attack due to having pain in their chests. It seems that
the feeling in the village is that...this particular tear gas was stronger
and more potent than recent times... I found myself coughing and my eyes
tearing up more than 30 minutes after the soldiers shot off their tear gas
bombs. This could have been due to either the high number of cannisters let
off, or it could have been because the gas was of a different potency. We
will never know."
On March 27, the Red Cross reportedly came to the village and interviewed
several people who had suffered from the tear gas. The Red Cross continues
to monitor the gas attacks, and is said to be preparing a report on the
issue.
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FAROUK ABDEL-MUHTI FREE AT LAST
PALESTINIAN IMMIGRANT ACTIVIST BACK IN NYC
Farouk Abdel-Muhti kissed the ground at New York's La Guardia Airport as he
ended 718 day in immigration detention on April 12--just hours after being
freed from an Atlanta penitentiary. Federal Judge Yvette Kane, in
Harrisburg, PA, issued an order on April 8 directing the government to
release the New York-based Palestinian immigrant activist within ten days,
calling him a "stateless man," and therefore not deportable.
Abdel-Muhti, born in Ramallah in the West Bank in 1947, had been jailed
since April 2002 on the basis of a 1995 deportation order. His legal team
had agrued he could not be legally deported back to Palestine in the
forseeable future. Judge Kane agreed, finding that Abdel-Muthi made
"substantial" efforts to obtain travel documents to leave the United
States, to no avail.
Abdel-Muhti was seized on April 26, 2002, at his home in Queens by the
Absconder Task Force, a joint federal-state immigration enforcement unit.
His arrest came a month after he began working regularly at New York's
non-commercial WBAI Radio, arranging interviews with Palestinians in the
Occupied Territories.
Abdel-Muhti has lived in the US without official immigration status for
over 30 years. Because he left the West Bank before the Israeli takeover in
1967, he cannot recieve travel documents from either Israel or the
Palestine Authority. Kane wrote that Abdel-Muhti "has sought travel
documents from Jordan, Israel, Palestinian authorities, Honduras and Egypt.
All efforts have been unsuccessful due to his unique position as a
Palestinian-born individual who is ineligible for either Israeli or
Palestinian identification numbers. Government efforts have likewise been
fruitless."
The Supreme Court's 2001 ruling in Zadvydas v. Davis mandates the release
of immigration detainees who prove to be undeportable after six months.
Abdel-Muhti's detention ultimately lasted nearly 24 months--with over 250
days in solitary confinement. But the government refused to release him or
grant bond--first claiming it was on the verge of deporting him, then
arguing that the Zadvydas limits should not apply because he had obstructed
his own removal by intentionally confusing his identity.
The court rejected this claim, with Judge Kane calling the government's
repeated demands for more information about his identity "a Kafkaesque
exchange." She especially cited a last-minute government request that he
submit the same type of Israeli visa request that Israel had rejected in
his case some 30 years ago.
On April 5, just three days ahead of Kane's ruling, federal authorities
flew Abdel-Muhti from a county jail near Harrisburg to a federal
penitentiary in Atlanta, GA, hundreds of miles from his friends, family and
supporters in the New York area. Up to this point, he had been kept at
county facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the move to Atlanta
raised feras that he would be "disappeared" into the federal prison system.
Instead, he was placed on a flight back to New York. Activists, who had
held weekly vigils for his release at New York's Federal Building, hailed
this as a victory.
(Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti: www.freefarouk.org)
See also WW3 REPORT #97: 97.html#warhome1
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Special to WORLD WAR 3 REPORT, May 15, 2004
Reprinting permissible with attribution
WW3Report.com