Hamas police prevent Muslim pilgrims from leaving Gaza, says their exit was not coordinated

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press Writer

¶ GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Hamas police set up checkpoints across Gaza on Saturday to prevent pilgrims from leaving for a holy Muslim ritual in Saudi Arabia, beating some who tried to dodge barriers, witnesses said.

¶ The Islamic militants who rule Gaza were upset that the pilgrims coordinated their journey with Hamas' rival, the Palestinian Authority. The authority, based in the West Bank, is run by Hamas' bitter rival, the Fatah movement. The crackdown on the pilgrims highlights the depth of the bitterness between the two groups.

¶ Egypt criticized Hamas' actions as unbecoming of an Islamic movement.

¶ The pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia is meant to be undertaken by Muslims at least once in a lifetime, and is considered a great event for believers.

¶ Hamas seized control of Gaza from Fatah-allied forces last year, and animosity between the rivals has growing in recent months.

¶ The Western-backed Palestinian Authority and the Hamas rulers of Gaza submitted separate lists of Gaza pilgrims to the Saudi authorities for visa approvals in the weeks leading to the pilgrimage, which will take place in December.

¶ The rival Palestinian governments each claim to be legitimate, and their wrangle over who has the authority to send Gaza pilgrims to Mecca is a measure of sovereignty. So far Saudi Arabia has rebuffed the Hamas list. Different regions are given quotas for the number of pilgrims they can send to Saudi Arabia, and Gaza was allowed to dispatch about 3,000.

¶ On Friday, the Palestinian Authority announced that pilgrims should report to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt the following day.

¶ The Gaza pilgrims were to cross into Egypt and travel from there to Mecca. But after the Palestinian Authority announcement, Hamas police set up 16 checkpoints on roads leading to the passage.

¶ Witnesses said police sent back cars that appeared to carry pilgrims.

¶ "They called us traitor pilgrims," said a man who identified himself as a pilgrim to a Gaza television station.

¶ A woman called in, saying her mother, a pilgrim, was beaten on her hand and needed treatment.

¶ Witnesses would not give their names, for fear of retribution by Hamas police.

¶ Hamas police did not allow reporters into the area close to the border crossing.

¶ Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu said nobody was beaten and said the press were not banned from the area.

Motley crew of foreigners defies Israel's blockade of Gaza to help Palestinians fish and farm

By DIAA HADID

Associated Press Writer

¶ KHUZAA, Gaza Strip (AP) _ A tattooed Italian trucker, middle-aged twin sisters from San Jose, Calif., a polite Scottish couple and a solemn-faced Greek hailed a cab in Gaza City, drawing stares from passers-by unused to visitors.

¶ The party was off to southern Gaza to plant wheat with Palestinian farmers in a dangerous area near an Israeli-patrolled border.

¶ They were among some 80 foreign volunteers who have sailed across the Mediterranean to Gaza in three trips since August, defying a closure of the Hamas-ruled territory imposed by Israel and Egypt.

¶ The blockade-runners from the Free Gaza Movement are a motley bunch. They have included physicians, lawmakers and Yvonne Ridley, a British woman who was kidnapped by the Taliban and afterward converted to Islam.

¶ One high-profile volunteer was Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who is now the international community's Mideast peace envoy.

¶ They bring medicines, accompany fishermen and farmers to dangerous areas, and say they want to draw attention to the hardship the blockade has inflicted on 1.4 million Gazans.

¶ "Governments in the West are asleep," said Vittorio Arrigoni, 33, the trucker, whose black cap featured the face of Che Guevara.

¶ Activists accompany Gaza fishermen beyond the 3-mile limit enforced by the Israeli navy. They also escort farmers to border area fields that Israel has declared off-limits because militants have launched rockets from there.

¶ Israel's navy has not tried to stop the boats, apparently to avoid unwanted publicity. "The entry of a few people doesn't mean the blockade is off," said Andy David, a Foreign Ministry official.

¶ Israel's patience is clearly limited. On Nov. 18, a week after their wheat-planting effort, Arrigoni and two others were arrested for going to sea with Palestinian fishermen.

¶ After Hamas, the militant Islamic group, seized control of the territory by force in June 2007, Israel and Egypt virtually sealed Gaza. They mainly allow in humanitarian aid, rationed fuel and some commercial goods. Since early November, Israel has kept its crossings mostly sealed in response to Palestinian rocket fire. Booth, Blair's sister-in-law, was stuck in Gaza for weeks because of the closure.

¶ The activists' presence shines a spotlight on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, said Chris Gunness, spokesman for a U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees.

¶ They have also won praise from Hamas, which is pledged to Israel's destruction, and which cracks down on political rivals.

¶ Activists say they are focused on the plight of ordinary Palestinians, but are aware Hamas is using their presence to legitimize its rule.

¶ The group in the taxi traveled to the farm of Yousef Najjar, 47, in the southern Gaza village of Khuzaa. Najjar said he hadn't approached his land for two years, fearing he would be shot from an Israeli watchtower.

¶ The visitors drew excitement and inquisitive stares _ Arrigoni with his eyebrow ring and black sleeveless shirt showing off his tattoos, Californian Donna Wallach wearing a hat emblazoned with pro-Palestinian slogans.

¶ They walked onto Najjar's land. He followed them, strewing handfuls of wheat. An Israeli army jeep drove by along the fence but didn't stop.

¶ Village women soon rushed to the area hauling seed sacks on donkey carts to be sowed.

¶ But when children ran to the border fence, Israeli soldiers fired in the air, then into the soil around the farmers. Nobody was injured.

¶ The next day, Israeli forces and Hamas militants fought a gunbattle in the same area.

¶ Israel will likely let the activist boats keep coming, provided they carry legitimate cargo, Israeli military analyst Shlomo Brom said. "If anyone on these boats tries to do something that is not kosher, they will be stopped," he said.

¶ Since their fishing-boat outing, Arrigoni has been deported along with Scotsman Andrew Muncie, 34. The third detainee, Darlene Wallach, 57, was to be deported Wednesday, according to her twin sister.

¶ Activists say some of their deported colleagues will return on their boat, Dignity, which they hope will make a monthly 240-mile run from the island of Cyprus to Gaza. It's expected back in December, said organizer Greta Berlin.

¶ Each trip costs some $38,000, but donors are generous, Berlin said.

¶ "This kind of thing has caught the imagination of the world," she said.

--
Diaa Hadid
Correspondent
The Associated Press
dhadid@ap.org
diaa_hadid2@yahoo.co.uk
Please send releases to both addresses

Gaza residents make wood fires, cook with car oil to get through electricity blackouts

By BEN HUBBARD and DIAA HADID

Associated Press Writers

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ While an Israeli cutoff in fuel shipments has closed down a dozen of his competitors, baker Khalil Awad stays in business thanks to a little creativity and dirty black oil drained from car engines.

    The cutoff in fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip's sole power plant started a week ago in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

    Israel has also banned journalists from entering Gaza, prompting top executives from some of the world's largest media organizations to file a rare protest.
    Blackouts now last 16 to 20 hours each day, and shortages of kerosene and cooking gas are widespread. While wealthier Gazans have generators and diesel pumped in through contraband tunnels from Egypt, poorer residents have to be inventive.
    Many households have run out of cooking gas to make their own bread, so women flocked to Awad's shop on a recent morning with trays of unbaked pita. He gave them numbers to keep the order. A worker shoveled three loaves at a time into the oven with a long wooden paddle.
    "We have to eat bread," Awad shrugs. "Somebody has to bake it."
    ____
    A handful of salt is 23-year-old Naela's secret recipe to working her old-fashioned brass-bottomed lamp when the power cuts off. She can't find kerosene in the shops, so she pours in diesel instead along with a handful of salt. The salt reduces the smoke and lightens the heavy burning smell.
    "It's like a doctor's prescription. Works every time," the university student says proudly.
    The dirty laundry is a more difficult task. Naela has to rush to work the washing machine when the electricity blinks on, often at 11 p.m. She sometimes hangs laundry until 2 a.m.
    And there isn't much she can do about missing out on her favorite dubbed-over Turkish soap operas.
    "If I don't have studies, I just go to sleep. There's nothing else to do during a blackout," Naela says.
    _______
    Two hairdressers work furiously tugging and blow-drying the hair of a young bride and her mother. The generator in Victoria Shaer's salon is making a banging noise, and they have to finish before the fuel runs out.
    Shaer, a 33-year-old Russian who came to the territory 12 years ago with her Palestinian husband, speaks rapid-fire slangy Gaza-style Arabic while she blow-dries a clump of hair, runs hairspray over it and rolls it up. She won't turn away a customer, so she works quickly.
    "There's only so much fuel I can afford to buy," Shaer explains while holding pins in her mouth.
    Miriam Faris of Gaza's fanciest salon, Rosies, has a different problem: Her upper-class customers don't understand why she has to wash their hair in lukewarm water. Faris doesn't get enough power to heat her water boiler.
    "I tell them: Sister, what you see happening in the country is also happening to us here. We aren't in a bubble," Faris says.
    _______
    Gaza's fuel shortages hit the strip's beloved shwarma shops with a one-two punch.
    No electricity means the motors won't rotate the spits of spiced, juicy meat, and no gas means no flame to grill it.
    The fuel shortages forced Ali Asaliya, owner of the al-Waleed Restaurant in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jebaliya, to give up his shwarma endeavor altogether.
    He now serves only rice and chicken, kindling a huge wood fire under a cauldron in the street each morning to make the day's food. The change has depressed the once-proud shwarma man.
    "I feel like I'm 30 percent below zero," Asaliya says.
    ___
    It's the opposite for Wajih Imbayid, whose ancient bakery runs on wood fire. For 50 years, he has been shuttling bread in and out of his wood oven for people in his impoverished Gaza City neighborhood. But with shortages in cooking gas, housewives are now asking him to cook their already-prepared dinner.
    On a recent day, Imabyid shoved in chicken dishes and large trays of sweet potatoes alongside the bread. The baker charges a dollar for every dish he bakes, and says the shortages are making him a profit.
    "When there's no shortage, you would come and in see me sitting, doing nothing," Imbayid says.
    Shopkeeper Khaled Yaziji is also making a tidy profit out of Gaza's latest craze, which began with the blackouts: colorful windproof cigarette lighters that also work as a flashlight.
    The "Beacon Windproof Lighters" sell for about a dollar and come in red, blue, green and yellow. They are smuggled in from Egypt through tunnels.
    Yaziji, 26, says he's sold 10 boxes since the blackouts began. Each box has 25 lighters, making him $65 so far. "It's new in the market," Yaziji boasts. "The boys love them."

UN staff turn Gazans away from food aid centers, citing shortages caused by Israel closure

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer

    SHATI REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Needy Gazans seeking food aid walked away empty-handed from locked U.N. distribution centers Saturday, after a strict Israeli border closure depleted U.N. food reserves.
    Israel sealed Gaza's borders nearly two weeks ago as part of a new round of fighting between Israeli forces and Gaza's Hamas rulers. The clashes, including Hamas rocket fire on Israeli border towns and Israeli air strikes on Gaza militants, have eroded a truce that had largely held for five months.
    The U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called on Israel to open the crossings to humanitarian aid and condemned the rocket fire on Israel. Measures that increase the suffering of Gaza's civilians "are unacceptable and should cease immediately," he said in a statement.
    Highlighting the growing tensions, two Palestinians were killed in disputed circumstances in northern Gaza.
    Palestinian Health Ministry official Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, citing reports from local medics, said the two were killed by an Israeli airstrike. However, the military said Israeli forces were not involved. In the past, militants have sometimes been killed by Gaza rockets that fell short or exploded early.
    The Popular Resistance Committees, a small militant group, said one of its members was killed. The identity of the second man wasn't immediately known.
    Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Saturday that Israel's military may soon have to conduct a wide-scale operation but called for caution.
    "It's possible that in the near future there will be a need for a wide-scale operation, but harsh words do not equal policy," he told a legal conference near Jerusalem. "On the other hand, the military is prepared for a strong and painful operation."
    In the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, hundreds of people walked away empty-handed from a U.N. food distribution center Saturday. A note taped to the center's blue gate said that the day's round of distributions was put off until Dec. 13 "because of a lack of food to distribute."
    In all, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency distributes food to some 750,000 Gazans, or nearly half the territory's population. The needy get a new parcel of rice, flour, sugar and oil every three months. On Saturday, it would have been the turn of some 20,000 Gazans to pick up food supplies, U.N. aid officials said.
    Itaf Yazji arrived at the Shati distribution center Saturday, only to find it locked. "What shall we eat now?" said the 54-year-old mother of five, who also cares for a disabled relative. Yazji said she had been waiting anxiously to pick up food because her family had ran out of rice and flour.
    The United Nations World Food Program, which feeds another 130,000 people in Gaza says it has enough food to distribute for the next four weeks.
    Most of Gaza's 1.4 million residents live in poverty that has deepened since Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the territory after militant group Hamas seized power in July last year.
    Under the blockade, Israel is meant to allow in humanitarian aid, rationed fuel and some commercial goods. Israel says the closure was imposed in response to continued violence.
    The cease-fire began to deteriorate last week after an Israeli military raid on what the army said was a tunnel that militants planned to use for a cross-border raid. Twelve militants have been killed since, and some 140 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza at Israel. They include four Grad-type Katyushas that landed in Ashkelon on Friday, some 11 miles (17 kilometers) from Gaza.
    In the West Bank town of Ramallah, a Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with the outgoing Israeli prime minister on Monday and raise his concern about the Gaza fighting.
    Abbas' forces lost control of Gaza in June 2007 after several days of fighting against Hamas. But the Palestinian president still claims to be the legitimate ruler of the coastal strip.
    The Israeli and Palestinian leaders have met regularly for the past year as part of U.S.-backed peace talks. However, all sides have acknowledged that they'll miss the end-of-year target for a peace deal. Olmert has three months left in office.

Short of fuel and electricity, Gazans discover one abundant resource: ingenuity

By BEN HUBBARD and DIAA HADID

Associated Press Writers

¶ GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Coping with lengthy power cuts has become one of the biggest challenges for 1.4 million Gaza residents as Israel's tight blockade of the territory enters its fourth week.

¶ The closure, imposed Nov. 5 to force Gaza's Hamas rulers to halt rocket fire on Israeli border communities, comes after 19 months of sharply restricted access to the territory. The isolation has taken its toll, causing rolling blackouts and shortages of fuel and cooking gas.

¶ ___

¶ Samah Ahmad jokes that she looks like a miner.

¶ The 29-year-old Gaza resident uses her mobile phone as a flashlight, fastening it to her head with a scarf. The light illuminates her embroidery work through the night.

¶ "If I wasn't doing embroidery, I'd be lying awake, doing nothing," said Ahmad.

¶ Ahmad likes African motifs and is working on an orange-and-yellow pattern inspired by the Ghanian flag. She charges her phone when the electricity is on, giving her about four hours worth of light.

¶ Her only complaint? "Sometimes I fix the phone so tightly it hurts," Ahmad says.

¶ ___

¶ Khalil Abu Shamaleh, 38, can be seen most nights huddled in Gaza cafes that offer wireless Internet.

¶ Shamaleh, who belongs to Gaza's small minority of laptop carriers, is used to going online from his apartment. But Gaza's blackouts often cut his connection, and when Gaza goes dark he sets up in generator-powered cafes.

¶ Electricity is distributed in a rotating system around sections of the city, and Abu Shamaleh has memorized the schedule.

¶ One recent evening in a Gaza cafe, Abu Shamaleh stood up at his corner table, paid his bill and packed up his laptop.

¶ He knew it was his neighborhood's turn to get electricity.

¶ "Power's back on," he said, smiling. "I'm going home."

¶ ______

¶ Every dawn, 37-year-old Ferial Kheisi and her mother-in-law head to a backyard hut where they keep an ancient wood-burning oven. They bake hundreds of pita loaves for their large clan east of Gaza City

¶ Kheisi's routine hasn't changed since she married at age 14. She's expert enough to breast-feed her toddler son while tossing in loaves.

¶ Since blackouts immobilized Kheisi's electric oven, she's begun using her wood stove for more than baking bread. Now she takes advantage of the heat and the flames shooting through the stove's roof to cook pots of food _ usually beans and rice.

¶ The power cuts have left Kheisi tied to wood fires all day. There's tea to boil for the men and for guests, food to cook before her children come home from school, and then more tea after lunch.

¶ "Everything tastes better cooked over a wood fire," Kheisi said through the smoke.

¶ ______

¶ Customers crowd around the shack of old-fashioned tinkerer Mohammed Abu Seif to repair the stoves their grandparents once used.

¶ The blackouts and a severe shortage of cooking gas have put most ovens out of commission. But these copper stoves, dug out of basements and storage rooms, can work on diesel fuel, with a little salt added to diminish the smell. Diesel remains widely available, smuggled into Gaza through tunnels that crisscross the territory's border with Egypt.

¶ Umm Mohammed, a 50-year-old housewife, waited at the shop to repair her ancient stove.

¶ She remembered her family using the stove to heat bath water when she was a girl. Her family had kept it in storage since electricity arrived decades ago.

¶ "It's noisy, it goes wee, wee and scares the kids," she said. "We wanted to forget these stoves."

¶ ______

¶ On the counter of electrician Khalil Azzam's shop lie the most recent casualties of Gaza's power cuts: three cordless telephones, two electric teapots, a rice cooker, a fax machine, three blenders and an iron. There are more in the back, he said.

¶ A steady steam of customers flowed in on a recent afternoon: A woman in a flowery blue headscarf brought in a fried hairdryer. A man in a suit brought in an electric teapot, a desk lamp and a pair of computer speakers. Aisha Hasan, a high school teacher, came to collect the tape deck she uses to listen to news, religious music and "anything that's not forbidden by Islam," like love songs, she said.

¶ All met their end in the same way.

¶ "When the electricity goes out then comes back on, there's a surge and it can burn out everything," said Azzam, 35.

4 Palestinian militants killed in clash with Israeli troops in Gaza as 5-month truce frays

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer   

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fired missiles and mortars at each other along the Gaza-Israel border on Wednesday, killing four Gaza gunmen and further chipping away at an eroding truce.
    Israel has responded to the violence by clamping down on the seaside territory, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, and a U.N. aid agency warned Wednesday it would be forced to halt aid shipments this week if the closure is not eased.
    Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers and Israeli leaders have said they're interested in restoring calm in the region but the latest fighting highlighted the persistent tensions along the border despite the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that took hold in June.
    Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007, and Israel later declared Gaza a "hostile entity."
    The Israeli military and Palestinian militants gave conflicting versions of how Wednesday's fighting started.
    The military said clashes began after Israeli troops spotted militants trying to lay an explosive device near the Israel-Gaza border fence. Soldiers killed four militants, at one point entering Gaza in pursuit of gunmen, the military said. Israeli aircraft also fired two missiles at open fields.
    Palestinian militants said they fired mortars only after the Israeli forces crossed into Gaza.
    Hamas threatened retaliation. "Our response to the enemy will be painful, and will spill the Zionists' blood," spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement. But Hamas stopped short of declaring the truce to be over.
    Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak praised his forces. "The quick reactions of the soldiers, who know how to switch in split seconds from routine patrols along the fence to fighting mode, once again dictated the result of the battle, and it is good that this is the case," he said during a meeting with army commanders. His comment was broadcast on Army Radio.
    The truce began to unravel last week, after Israeli forces trying to destroy a militants' tunnel entered Gaza, setting off battles that killed seven Palestinian gunmen. The fighting unleashed a wave of rocket attacks from Gaza at Israeli border towns.
    Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza shortly after the violence broke out last week. On Wednesday, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency warned it would be forced to halt its food distribution to 750,000 needy Gazans this week because it could not replenish supplies.
    "This has now become a blockade on the United Nations," said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.
    Military spokesman Peter Lerner said Israel might allow food aid to pass through on Thursday.
    A U.N. flour warehouse in Gaza City was empty Wednesday, and another held six tons of canned meat _ half of what's needed for a day's distribution, the U.N. said.
    Foreign journalists who've also been affected by the clampdown protested Israel's decision to keep them out of Gaza for a seventh straight day.
    In a statement, the Foreign Press Association, which represents international media covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, described the ban as a "serious violation of press freedom."
    "This is Israel's policy to not show what's going on in Gaza," said Conny Mus, a reporter for the Dutch television channel RTL.
    Also Wednesday, diplomats charged that Israeli security forces stopped their tour of the volatile West Bank city of Hebron. About 20 diplomats, led by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki, were walking in the Israeli controlled part of the city when their way was blocked, they said.
    Israeli police said the group was diverted to the Palestinian-controlled part of the city. Israel controls a section of central Hebron where about 500 Jewish settlers live.

Despite border closure, Israel resumes fuel shipments to Gaza

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Israel resumed fuel shipments to Gaza's only power plant Tuesday despite a tight border closure, allowing the facility to restart operations.
    Israel sealed Gaza's borders last week, cutting off fuel shipments which are paid for by Europe and delivered through an Israeli-run crossing. After a request by peace envoy Tony Blair, Israel decided late Monday to resume the shipments on Tuesday.
    The power plant was to receive 211,000 gallons of fuel Tuesday, said Alix de Mauny, a spokeswoman for the European Commission. She said she hoped there would be more deliveries in coming days.
    The plant shut down Monday evening, cutting power to much of Gaza City but was partially started up again Tuesday.
    The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, meanwhile, said it would halt food distribution in Gaza by Friday if the borders remain sealed. The distribution reaches about 750,000 people _ or more than half of Gaza's impoverished population. The agency said its warehouses are running out of lunch meat, oil, powdered milk and grain.
    Internal Palestinian tensions also flared Tuesday, on the fourth anniversary of the death of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
    During a memorial rally for Arafat in the West Bank, Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, harshly criticized his Hamas rivals. Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Abbas by force in June 2007, leaving him and his Fatah party in charge of the West Bank. Rifts have only deepened since then.
    In his speech, Abbas held Hamas responsible for another failed reconciliation attempt. Over the weekend, Hamas pulled out of planned Egyptian-brokered unity talks at the last minute, demanding that Abbas first release Hamas prisoners in the West Bank.
    "Now it's clear who is not serious (about reconciliation), and Arab countries should intercede and condemn Hamas," Abbas told the crowd.
    He also accused Hamas of putting its own interests before those of the Palestinian people. "We will not call anybody a nonbeliever or traitor, as they do," he said. "They (Hamas supporters) must return to the lap of this homeland and start thinking of the interests of this homeland."
    In Gaza, Hamas security forces prevented Fatah supporters movement from staging an Arafat memorial. Last year's gathering there drew some 250,000 people and turned into an expression of discontent with Hamas rule. Seven civilians were killed when Hamas police shot at stone throwers.
    This year, Hamas did not issue rally permits. They also rounded up scores of Fatah activists and forced them to sign pledges that they would not participate in illegal gatherings, said Samir Zakout of the local human rights group Mezan.
    Zakout said print shops were told ahead of the anniversary not to produce Fatah paraphernalia without permission from the Hamas government.
    Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said "there are those who want to exploit this anniversary to bring chaos and anarchy back to Gaza's streets." He also accused Abbas of misrepresenting Hamas' positions in his speech.
    The Gaza-Israel border, meanwhile, returned to calm Tuesday, after several days of tensions. Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire in June, and it was widely observed. However, last week Israeli forces entered Gaza in search of a militants' tunnel, setting of clashes that killed seven Hamas militants. The fighting triggered several days of rocket fire from Gaza onto Israeli border towns, causing no injuries.
    In response, Israel sealed Gaza's borders; even before the closure, only a trickle of goods had been allowed in.
    In an attempt to improve security, Israeli defense officials say the military has deployed remote-control machine guns along the border with Gaza.
    Female soldiers watching television screens in control rooms in the rear can spot targets and open fire. In the past, lookouts had to call in ground forces to intercept militants.
    Israel's military is shifting to more unmanned weaponry along the Gaza border in an attempt to protect soldiers. An Israeli company recently developed an unmanned vehicle to patrol the region.
    The military had no immediate comment, and the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the new weapons have not officially been made public.
    ___
    Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Boat carrying EU lawmakers approaches Gaza port, part of protest against Gaza blockade

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ A group of European lawmakers sailed from Cyprus to Gaza on Saturday, defying an internationally backed blockade of the Hamas-run territory, and activists promised to send more boatloads of visitors and goods to end Gaza's isolation.
    Israel's navy did not try to block the vessel, Dignity, which made its third run to Gaza since August. Among the 23 passengers were 13 members of various European parliaments and an Israeli journalist.
    "We came on a boat. Many more boats can come. Let's have dozens of boats and then we can open up the siege," said Clare Short, a former member of the British Cabinet.
    Parlimentarians and activists say they are not seeking to legitimize Hamas' rule of Gaza, which it seized last year after pushing out security forces loyal to Fatah. Hamas' takeover prompted Israel and Egypt to seal its borders with Gaza, only allowing in humanitarian aid and a trickle of commercial goods.
    Instead, activists say they want to highlight the harm done to Gaza's 1.4 million residents.
    Activists carried into Gaza a ton of medicines and some hospital equipment.
    The boat was decked with Palestinian, British, Greek and Irish flags when it arrived in Gaza's tiny port Saturday morning.
    Black-clad Hamas police on horse and foot secured the dock as intelligence officials in civilian clothing patrolled the area. The ship carried 13 lawmakers, including Clare Short, a former British minister and Lord Nazir Ahmed, a Muslim member of Britain's House of Lords. They will stay in Gaza until Tuesday.
    "Now we have experience on how to travel by sea," said Ahmed, wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with "Free Gaza" and a black-and-white checkered Palestinians scarf.
    He said there were plans to send more boats to the territory, including one that will carry Arab parliamentarians. Ahmed said the trip was to show solidarity with Palestinians.
    "Even prisoners have rights ... to have a life in dignity," he said, refering to the difficulties faced by Gaza residents to leave the crammed territory.
    Shortly after the boat arrived, Hamas officials based in Syria said their group would boycott upcoming Palestinian reconciliation talks with rival Fatah. The decision was taken because Fatah did not release Hamas loyalists from West Bank jails, the group said.
    The talks were to start in Cairo, Egypt on Sunday.

Palestinians turn savvier in protesting Israel's West Bank separation barrier, but at a cost

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer

    NAALIN, West Bank (AP) _ A Palestinian teen tracks Israeli troops with a video camera to document abuse of demonstrators.
    A community organizer tours West Bank villages with a PowerPoint presentation teaching the art of creative protest.
    These are just two examples of the increasingly savvy methods Palestinians are using to fight Israel's West Bank separation barrier _ a campaign whose danger was driven home this week by the death of a 10-year-old Palestinian boy.
    Six years after Israel began building the barrier, Palestinian villagers march almost daily in an attempt to halt construction work that threatens to swallow up thousands more acres of West Bank land. Many protests turn into confrontations between youths hurling rocks and Israeli troops responding with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and at times live fire.
    The aim is to slow construction, draw media attention and ensure that Israeli high court judges hearing challenges to the barrier's route "will think twice before deciding such a high-profile case," said Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer representing Palestinian villages.
    Israel's separation barrier _ a mix of towering concrete walls topped with barbed wire and electronic fences _ is two-thirds complete, and is expected to stretch about 500 miles when finished.
    Israel says the barrier is a temporary defense against Palestinian attackers. However, at points it extends into the West Bank, incorporating Jewish settlement blocs and seizing land from Palestinian villages, prompting Palestinian claims of a land grab.
    Naalin, which stands to lose thousands of acres of olive groves to the barrier, is a new focal point of protests. On Tuesday, 10-year-old Ahmed Moussa was killed there in a confrontation between Israeli soldiers and boys hurling stones at Israeli forces, witnesses said.
    A Palestinian autopsy found he was shot through the head by live fire _ a charge the Israeli military was investigating. The boy was buried in Naalin on Wednesday.
    Protests in Naalin began three months ago when bulldozers started clearing village land for the barrier.
    On July 7, Salam Kanaan trained her video camera on a group of Israeli soldiers during a protest there, capturing them as they shot a bound, blindfolded Palestinian in the foot with a battalion commander holding his arm.
    The Israeli military denounced the shooting as "grave," put the officer on forced leave and launched an investigation.
    Kanaan, 17, said the film's impact made her more determined to keep her camera focused on troops. "This is a weapon for villagers like us, which an army can't defeat," she said.
    Veteran anti-barrier campaigners from the nearby village of Bilin are teaching others how to keep the media interested, bulldozers idle and Israeli soldiers exhausted.
    They run workshops with PowerPoint presentations on different ways to protest. They also hold question-and-answer sessions for villages threatened by the barrier, and screen a documentary about Bilin's four-year struggle to push the obstacle back.
    Bilin scored a victory in Israel's high court in 2007, though Israel's Defense Ministry still has not complied with the ruling.
    Mahmoud Abdullah said he attended a protest workshop before launching weekly protests against the barrier in his village of Khader.
    "They taught us how to tie ourselves to a tree and blind soldiers with mirrors," said Abdullah, adding he also learned to surprise soldiers by holding protests in different places to confuse them.
    Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, a Bilin activist who worked with Bedouin tribesmen who complain of harassment by Jewish settlers, said he begins by discussing resistance.
    "I then show them a documentary of Bilin and I pause at the different strategies we have, like stuffing ourselves in barrels and rolling in front of bulldozers," Abu Rahmeh said.
    At one Naalin protest, Palestinian youths rushed down sloping olive groves, whooping as they climbed onto a bulldozer clearing land for the barrier. The startled driver was quickly chased away while other Palestinians lobbed rocks to divert the soldiers, who hurled back sound bombs and tear gas, leaving plumes of acrid smoke.
    The bulldozer's work was held up for a couple of hours _ a successful outcome, Palestinians said.
    Although Bilin activists say they teach nonviolent forms of protest, they are reluctant to tell other Palestinians not to hurl rocks, saying it's a matter left for individual villages to decide.
    Activists in other villages say throwing rocks is counterproductive. In Khader, demonstrators stick to peaceful protests, including holding Muslim prayers near the barrier construction site.
    Sfard, the Israeli lawyer, said legal challenges are a key element of the campaign. The high court has ruled in three separate cases that the barrier must be moved away from Palestinian villages to reduce hardship although the Defense Ministry has complied with only one of the rulings citing budget problems.
    Many Palestinians close to the planned barrier route say they're driven to protest because livelihoods are at stake.
    In the village of Jayyous in the northern West Bank, where the barrier went up in 2003, putting village farmland out of reach for three-fourths of the village's farmers, said Mayor Mohammed Taher.
    "People are now unemployed, their sons are leaving university because they can't afford tuition," Taher said.
    In the meantime, Palestinians are honing their strategies.
    "Now I tell the protesters, take a camera, take a camera," Kanaan said, holding her own.

Israel-Hamas truce threatened by deadly airstrikes in Gaza, rockets fired at Israel

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer

   GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers scrambled Wednesday to contain fallout from the worst fighting since a truce was declared five months ago, but a flare-up later in the day threatened to unravel it anew.
    Gaza militants pounded southern Israel early Wednesday with dozens of rockets to avenge raids a day earlier that killed six militants, but the guns quickly fell silent with neither side appearing to have much to gain from renewed hostilities.
    "We have no intention of violating the quiet," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on a tour of areas bordering Gaza. "But in any place where we need to thwart an action against Israeli soldiers and civilians, we will act."
    Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the group fired deep into Israel to demonstrate the price of continued aggression. At the same time, he said, Hamas had contacted Egyptian mediators to find ways of keeping the truce intact.
    But late Wednesday night, Israel launched annother airstrike, killing a Palestinian militant in northern Gaza. The army said it was targeting a rocket launcher, whom the Islamic Jihad group identified as its own. The group had fired two rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot and one of its leaders, Khader Habib, declared the truce over.
    Hamas, which agreed to the Egyptian-mediated truce, said Israel was breaching it.
    Before the Egyptian-mediated truce in June, near daily rocket barrages played havoc with southern border towns and Israel has not found a military solution to stop them. Retaliatory Israeli airstrikes killed scores of Palestinians in Gaza.
    Hamas, on the other hand, needs the calm to strengthen its hold on Gaza, where it seized control in June 2007, and restore its military capabilities ahead of a potential future battle with Israel.
    Clashes began late Tuesday after the Israeli army burst into Gaza to destroy what it said was a tunnel being dug near the border to abduct Israeli troops. During the incursion, Hamas gunmen battled Israeli forces. One Hamas fighter was killed, prompting a wave of mortar fire at nearby Israeli targets.
    An Israeli airstrike then killed five Hamas militants preparing to fire mortar shells. Hamas responded with the barrage of rockets, including one that landed in an empty area in the city of Ashkelon, some 10 miles north of Gaza.
    There were no reports of injuries or property damage. The army said four soldiers were wounded, two moderately, in the fighting.
    Thousands of Palestinian mourners rushed slain militants through the streets of the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, waving green Hamas flags and vowing revenge.
    Israeli defense officials said they had discovered a 300-yard long tunnel days ago, and concluded the passage was to be used for a kidnapping. Hamas already is holding an Israeli soldier that militants captured in a cross-border raid more than two years ago.
    Defense officials said they knew the raid could jeopardize the cease-fire, but concluded Hamas would have an interest in restoring the calm.
    Sporadic rocket attacks on southern Israel have persisted since the truce, but the attacks were carried out by smaller groups seeking to embarrass Hamas for preserving a truce with the Jewish state.
    Continued attacks have prompted Israel to close its crossings into the coastal strip of 1.4 million Palestinians. Israel and Egypt lead a blockade on the Gaza Strip, imposed since Hamas seized power of the territory a year ago.

Israeli launches airstrike, clashes with Gaza militants in first battle since truce, 6 killed

By DIAA HADID
Associated Press Writer

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ Israel launched an airstrike on Gaza early Wednesday after its troops fought a fierce gunbattle with Hamas militants who fired mortars into southern Israel. The fighting killed six Palestinians and threatened to unravel a June truce that had mostly quieted violence in the volatile territory.
    The violence was sparked after the Israeli army said its forces uncovered a tunnel about 300 yards (250 meters) inside the central Gaza Strip that militants planned to use to abduct Israeli soldiers. It said a special army unit had headed to the area to destroy the tunnel.
    The army claimed the move did not violate the truce, but instead it was a legitimate step to remove an immediate threat to Israel from Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
    Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, a Palestinian Health Ministry official, said heavy gunbattles erupted, killing one Palestinian and wounding three, including one woman. Residents identified the dead man as a Hamas militant.
    Hamas also insisted it had not violated the truce and was acting to prevent an Israeli incursion. Shortly after, it said it fired mortars at southern Israel.
    The army said it launched an airstrike at the mortar launchers and identified hitting them. Medics confirmed that five militants were killed in the strike.
    The airstrike and the armed confrontation that preceded it were the first of their kind since Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce in June. The only other fatality occurred in July, when Israeli troops shot and killed a teenage Palestinian militant along the border with the Gaza Strip.
    Hassanain said rescue officials were having a hard time reaching the site of the fighting and getting an exact description of casualties.
    Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, said in a text message to reporters that Hamas troops were engaged in a gunfight with Israeli forces in central Gaza.
    Hamas quickly vowed revenge for its casualty.
    "Our response will be harsh, and the enemy will play a heavy price," Hamas said in a statement on its military wing's Web site.
    A top military official said troops had discovered a "ticking tunnel," which was about to be used to abduct an Israeli soldier. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter, said the tunnel was dug from inside a Gaza home, illustrating that Hamas was using civilians for cover.
    "We don't have any intention of breaking the truce, we are working to isolate this threat," the official said, noting that some 60 mortars have been fired since the truce and Israel had chosen not to respond.
    Israel and Palestinian militant groups reached the Egyptian-mediated cease-fire in June after months of indirect negotiations. The deal halted a deadly cycle of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli reprisals.
    Sporadic rocket attacks on southern Israel have persisted, provoking Israel to close its crossings into the coastal strip of 1.4 million Palestinians and keep the blockade it imposed on the area after Hamas overran the territory a year ago more or less intact.
    The truce does not extend to the West Bank, which is ruled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's partner in peacemaking.
    Taher Nunu, a Hamas government spokesman, said Hamas considered the Israeli airstrike a violation of the truce.
    "This is a serious breach of the truce understandings reached through Egyptian mediation," he said in an e-mail message to reporters. "We consider this the most serious in a string of breaches."