From Occupied Palestine

Uprooted trees, razed houses... Israel leaves its calling card in Gaza
ERIC SILVER and SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 6 August 2004

Jerusalem -- The Palestinians of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip began to count the cost of a month-long Israeli invasion as the troops finally pulled out yesterday, leaving a trail of anger, despair and devastation behind them.

More than 42,000 olive, citrus and date trees had been uprooted, according to the local council. Altogether, 4,405 acres of orchards, vineyards and vegetable fields were flattened.

Palestinian mass protest halts work on Israel's security wall
ERIC SILVER in Jerusalem
SA'ID GHAZALI on the West Bank
Independent, 17 June 2004

Israel suspended construction of a security fence near the village of Iskaka yesterday, east of the settler town of Ariel, after hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli demonstrators traded stones for tear gas with troops and paramilitary police. The bulldozers are expected to be digging again soon.

Rantisi will take Yassin's place in Gaza
SA'ID GHAZALI and DONALD MacINTYRE
Independent, 24 March 2004

Abdel Aziz Rantisi was named yesterday as Hamas chief for the Gaza Strip and immediately repeated the faction's vows of vengeance for the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Mr Rantisi, 57, a frequent spokesman for Hamas on television, was appointed as the organisation moved swiftly to fill the gaps left by Sheikh Yassin. It designated the exiled Khaled Mashaal, chief of the faction's political bureau, as overall leader.

By 5am, the helicopters were waiting
SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 23 March 2004

It was just before dawn yesterday when the Middle East was turned upside-down. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had emerged from a hiding place: the whereabouts of which was one of Gaza's best-kept secrets. It was a moment Israel's government had waited for. Six days ago, it took the decision to assassinate the founder of Hamas. But for six days, the Israeli military could not find him, so good were his security precautions.

Arab problems require an Arab solution
SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 1 January 2004

The inability of Arab leaders to draw the right lessons from Saddam's rise and collapse - after all, he was one of the Arab dictators himself - leads me to contemplate the sterility of their regimes.

Although Saddam's intolerance and brutality was well known in the West, it came as news to millions in the Muslim world who had been deluded by the regime's pan-Arab slogans, which described him as the knight of the Arabs. But Iraqis, as well as the citizens of the other 21 Arab countries, have long yearned for freedom, democracy, progress, and modernisation.

Palestinians cheer militant executions of 'collaborators'
JUSTIN HUGGLER and SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 24 October 2003

At dawn in the Tulkarem refugee camp yesterday, two Palestinians were led out into a side alley where the executioners, their faces covered with hoods, shot them at point- blank range.

Then their bullet-filled bodies were dragged into the main square, where they were propped up and displayed to the crowd for 15 minutes. The alleged crime of the two men was collaborating with Israeli intelligence.

Israeli troops seize two wounded Palestinians from intensive care unit
SA'ID GHAZALI in West Bank
ERIC SILVER in Jerusalem
Independent, 27 August 2003

Israeli undercover troops stormed a Nablus hospital before dawn yesterday and snatched two wounded Palestinian gunmen from their beds in the intensive care unit. They imposed a curfew and transferred them by military ambulance to a Tel Aviv hospital, where they were being held under close guard.

Hamas chief dies in Israeli helicopter attack
SA'ID GHAZALI in Gaza
ERIC SILVER in Jerusalem
Independent, 25 August 2003

Israeli helicopter gunships killed a Hamas commander and three of his fighters in a missile strike on Gaza City last night. Three passers-by were also wounded.

Palestinian witnesses named the dead as Ahmad Ishtaiwe, 25, a senior officer in Hamas' Unit 103, which has frequently attacked Israeli tanks, and Wahid al-Hams, Ahmad Abu Hilaleh and Ahmad Abu Libdeh, all in their early twenties. The attack came three days after a similar raid that killed Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas political leader.

Palestinians vow revenge as they bury Hamas leader
SA'ID GHAZALI in Gaza, and
ERIC SILVER in Jerusalem
Independent, 23 August 2003

The funeral of Ismail Abu Shanab, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel on Thursday, turned into a massive show of Palestinian solidarity in Gaza yesterday. All the Palestinian militias, in battle fatigues, masks and martyrs' headbands, paraded their rifles and rocket launchers, brandishing their flags and vowing revenge.

The hudna on the cross road
SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 13 August 2003

Jerusalem -- After the assassination of two of its leaders in the Askar Refugee Camp in Nablus, West Bank, last Friday Hamas' military wing began plotting its revenge.

And yesterday as two Palestinian suicide bombers, one a member in al Aqsa Martyrs brigades and the other a Hamas militant, took the lives of two Israelis, that revenge was furious and threatening.