62 Palestinian shops destroyed

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Transcribed from the clipping

NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli forces staged the biggest demolition in the West Bank in years on Tuesday, destroying 62 shops in a Palestinian village. Also Tuesday, Israel’s Supreme Court relaxed a ban on soldiers using Palestinians as “human shields” or ordering Palestinians to knock on doors of Islamic militants’ houses.

In Gaza, Palestinians fired rockets at two Jewish settlements, damaging buildings but causing no casualties, settlers and the military said. In the village of Nazlat Issa, next to the West Bank border with Israel, seven bulldozers, guarded by 300 soldiers, destroyed shops and market stalls.

Dozens of protesters threw stones at troops, who fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets. Israel says the shops were built illegally. The mayor of the village accused Israel of waging war on the Palestinian economy. The market is a main source of income for the 2,500 residents, said the mayor, Ziad Salem.

Meanwhile, there have been numerous Palestinian complaints about Israeli practices that endanger them. While the military denies using Palestinians as human shields, journalists have documented the practice. The court on Tuesday amended a ruling to say soldiers could use Palestinians, if the Palestinians agree.

Marwan Dalal, a lawyer for the human rights group Adalah, condemned the decision. “International law prohibits the use of civilians by an occupying power,” he said. Israeli police also blew up a car carrying a large amount of explosives in the Israeli Arab city of Um el-Fahm, near the line with the West Bank. Three people escaped from the car.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian effort to bring rival Palestinian factions together in Cairo on Wednesday to negotiate a yearlong end to attacks on Israeli civilians appeared to run aground. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for dozens of suicide bomb attacks in Israel, said Tuesday that they would not attend the talks.

Officials from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement said they were awaiting further information.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (masthead-verified (the page carries the nameplate “COLUMBIA MISSOURIAN” at the top right and the dateline strip “WEDNESDAY January 22, 2003” at the top left. 22 January 2003 was a ).

Context added by this archive

Short, clean, fully legible. For the terminology job its value is precisely the thing that makes it a weak match for Maria’s note: it shows “Israeli Arab” surviving in 2003 as a geographic adjective for a town inside the Green Line, in an article whose people are all “Palestinians”.

Cite this clipping

"62 Palestinian shops destroyed," Columbia Missourian, 22 January 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-032. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-032