The Times · 14 September 2003
CP-2003-006
Palestinians camp out in compound, saying they will act as ‘human shields’
Mohammed Daragmeh, The Associated Press
Transcribed from the clipping
“RAMALLAH, West Bank — Two dozen Palestinians at Yasser Arafat’s headquarters settled down for a third straight night Saturday, pledging to serve as human shields if Israel tries to forcibly expel the Palestinian leader.
The men put up two tents next to Arafat’s bullet-pocked, sandbagged office in what remains of his headquarters compound, largely destroyed in previous Israeli raids. ‘We are here because we decided to be human shields to protect our leader,’ said Mohammed Diek, a 22-year-old university student. ‘We don’t have any weapons.
We just have our bodies.’… When 28-year-old construction worker Morad Hashash heard of the Israeli decision to banish Arafat, he rushed to the compound… ‘When I heard there would be a human shield I decided to be one of them,’ Hashash said.
For the third consecutive night, thousands of Palestinian men, women and children marched into the compound in a demonstration of support for Arafat, who emerged and kissed children. ‘I wanted to see him for the first time,’ said 77-year-old Fatima Kosba. ‘I wanted to talk to him, to sing for him, to do everything I can for him.
He is our national symbol.’”
Context added by this archive
The earliest human-shields clipping here, and the shields are volunteers who say so by name. Three are named on one page; the record had held one and a half.
Cite this clipping
"Palestinians camp out in compound, saying they will act as ‘human shields’," The Times, 14 September 2003, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-006. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-006
This clipping is read closely in the section below
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2003-006.
Read in: How “human shields” changed sides in three years
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