Midland News · 21 July 1996

CP-1996-018

Israel seals off Arab town

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli army sealed off the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday, in a showdown with Palestinians over the arrest of an Israeli Arab. Troops blockaded Ramallah, a bustling center of Palestinian commerce, because Palestinian agents seized Abd e-Salam Hirbawi late Friday night in Jerusalem, the army spokesman said.

Israel maintains that the Israel-PLO autonomy agreements forbid the Palestinian Authority to arrest Israeli citizens or to operate inside Jerusalem. The blockade cut off Ramallah from the rest of the West Bank and from Jerusalem, the army spokesman said. Only urgent medical cases could leave and only trucks carrying food or other essential supplies could enter.

Hirbawi, 50, was arrested at his Jerusalem home by Palestinian Preventative Security Service agents. The plainclothes agents were armed with pistols, his family said. The family said the reason for the arrest lies in a dispute with the Coptic Church, which claims ownership of a property that Hirbawi leases inside the Old City of Jerusalem.

The church enlisted the aid of Egypt’s government, which persuaded Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to support the church. Hirbawi was abducted because he refused to hand over the property, the family said. Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said the Palestinian Authority had been warned that Israel “took a very grave view of the abduction.”

Israel Radio reported that Israel is considering cancellation of the VIP pass of Col. Jebril Rajoub, head of the Preventative Security Service, unless Hirbawi is released. The pass enables the bearer to move freely between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with minimal security checks. Rajoub told the AP he knew nothing about the arrest of Hirbawi.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead or page date line is visible; the scan is a single column cut from the page. The story says the blockade happened “on Saturday” and the seizure “late Friday night”; July 20, 1996 was a Saturday, consistent with a July 21, 1996 paper, but the printed date could not be read.

Cite this clipping

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