- OCCUPIED JERUSALEM
-- Vindicating Palestinian warnings against the imminent Jewish terror
threat that is embedded with the illegal Israeli settlers on occupied territories
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities recently busted
a Jewish "terror cell" suspected of killing nine Palestinians
and of plotting and launching anti-Palestinian attacks capable of further
inflaming the crisis with the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation
since 1967.
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- Since July, Israeli police and the Shin Beth internal
security services have arrested nine Jewish settlers, including a reserve
soldier, unmasking only the tip of the iceberg of settlers' terrorism.
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- They are suspected of carrying out operations, mostly
roadside shootings that have killed at least nine Palestinians. The attacks
were claimed by anonymous sources as revenge attacks carried out by shadowy
groups.
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- Nine Palestinians have been killed since April 2001,
Israeli security forces have been allegedly unable to determine who was
behind the attacks.
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- Dozens of other Palestinians have been wounded in such
attacks, according to a report by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
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- B'Tselem said it knows of 15 killings of Palestinians
in the past three years in which Jewish militants are suspected.
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- In the 1980s, 28 Israelis were sentenced for their activity
in the so-called "Jewish Underground," which carried out a series
of attacks on Palestinians, including a shooting at the Islamic University
in Hebron in 1983. Three Palestinian students were killed in that attack.
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- In 1994, Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein, a resident of
the illegal settlement of "Kiryat Arba" adjacent to Hebron, shot
to death 29 Palestinian worshippers at the al-Haram al-Ibrahimi (known
to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs) before being killed by enraged survivors.
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- Thousands of Palestinian trees were uprooted by settlers'
vandalism and vast areas of agricultural land were burned by Jewish settlers.
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- The most recent arrest was that of a 21-year-old reservist
soldier, Yeoyariv Megouri, a resident of a settler outpost near the northern
West Bank settlement of Tapuah.
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- "If the suspicions against these guys come out as
true, it would be the worst case of Jewish terrorism since the 1980s,"
a top Israeli security official told local media.
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- The Haaretz newspaper reported Sunday that the cell had
been unknown to Israeli authorities until July when two West Bank settlers
were arrested and accused of seeking to carry out a bomb attack against
Palestinian civilians.
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- One of the two, Yitzhak Pass, was a resident of the occupied
southern West Bank city of Hebron. His arrest reportedly led authorities
to the underground cell.
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- The arrests of Pass and his brother-in-law Mattatyahu
Shvu themselves apparently stemmed from the May 2002 detention of three
settlers caught planting a large bomb outside a Palestinian school in east
Jerusalem.
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- The suspected mastermind of that attack, Yossi Ben Baroukh,
was arrested a few days later. Pass and Shvu were formally indicted on
August 8 for possessing explosives stolen from the army to carry out attacks.
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- Also on Friday, the remand of terror cell suspect Shachar
Dvir-Zeliger, 27, from Adei-Ad was extended by six days. According to information
released by Jerusalem's Magistrate's Court for publication, Dvir-Zeliger
is suspected of weapons violations, attempted murder, and planning and
carrying out terrorist attacks against Arabs that took place in recent
years.
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- Last month, police arrested Hebron resident Yitzhak Pass
and his brother-in-law Matityahu Shvu on suspicion of "security crimes"
against Palestinians. Pass and Shvu refused to cooperate with their interrogators.
In the end the two men were indicted only on the more minor crime of possessing
stolen explosives. Security officials believed that when arrested, Pass
and Shvu were on their way to perpetrate a terror bombing against a Palestinian
target.
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- Shin Bet sources were also quoted as saying that members
of their cell "were skilled snipers who acquired their skills in firearms
and explosives during their military service."
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- The nine Israelis arrested by police so far are:
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- - Yitzhak Pass, 27, from Hebron. Indicted on possession
of stolen explosives. - Matityahu Shvu, 25, from Havat Maoz. Indicted on
possession of stolen explosives. - Shachar Dvir-Zeliger, 27, from Adei-Ad.
Suspected of weapons violations, attempted murder and planning and carrying
out terror attacks against Palestinians. - Ronen Arousi, 25, from Givat
Ronen. - Sela Tur, 22, from Kiryat Arbaía. - Yisachar Peretz, 30,
from Kiryat Arba. - David Libman, 22, from Yitzhar. - Tzuriel Amior, 24,
from Adei-Ad. Was previously arrested in connection to the Bat-Ayin cell
suspected of planning to bomb an east Jerusalem school. - Yehoriv Meguri,
21, from Kfar Tapuach.
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- According to the list of charges against the suspects
published Sunday, the group mostly comprises Israeli ultra-nationalists.
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- A senior security official told Maariv that "if
all the suspicions against the men turn out to be correct, this would be
the most serious affair since the first Jewish underground was active in
the 1980s."
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- In 1984, police and the Shin Bet uncovered an organization
of at least 25 Jews that came to be known as the Jewish Underground. The
group assassinated three elected Palestinian mayors of Nablus, Hebron and
al-Biera and reportedly planned to blow up the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's
third holiest site in east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967.
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- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a longtime patron
of Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Some settlers feel
he has betrayed them by accepting the US-backed "roadmap" to
Palestinian statehood by 2005.
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- According to Israeli figures some 220,000 Israelis live
there now. But the Palestinian central statistics department said last
week that more than 420,000 thousand illegal settlers live now in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
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- The discrepancy between the Palestinian and Israeli figures
is due to Israel's considering the occupied east Jerusalem as unoccupied.
None of the Israeli Jews was in the city in 1967. During the 36-year old
Israeli occupation there are now more than 220 illegal Israeli settlers
in east Jerusalem.
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- More than half of the 160 Israeli settlements in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip grew by more than the 3 percent natural growth
rate, while 30 settlements recorded an overall drop in population. A further
30 settlements grew, but by less than the natural growth rate, Israeli
media reported recently.
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- Israeli Interior Ministry figures published last week
showed that growth at 76 settlements was higher than the natural growth
rate, but that there was negative internal migration throughout the West
Bank and Gaza Strip settlements.
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- Settler leaders have always complained Sharon is not
"tough" enough with Palestinians.
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- The New York Times reported last week that Israeli government
officials are increasingly concerned about a Jewish underground group that
is plotting revenge attacks on Palestinians.
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- A top Israeli security official told the Times that during
the last two years, at least seven Palestinians have been killed and 19
wounded in unsolved shootings attributed to Israeli civilians in the West
Bank. The major source of concern, the official said, is dozens of "hill
people" -- radical Jewish settlers in the West B
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- Source: Palestine Media Center - http://www.palestine-pmc.com/
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