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  Sunday  January 5  2003    11: 59 PM

Israeli Soldiers Tell Palestinian Villagers 'We will do to you what the Nazis did to us'

The estimated 25,000 people of this small town have been subjected to a fresh wave of “nightmarish terror” at the hands of the notorious Israeli border police unit whose largely undisciplined soldiers abducted and brutally murdered a Palestinian teenager in Hebron Monday night.

For two consecutive days, hundreds of soldiers, backed by military vehicles, two military trucks, and several large bulldozers, rampaged through the town, opening fire and stun grenades in all directions.

On Wednesday, the force held some 200 Palestinian youths inside the town’s only cultural Center for 10 hours during which the soldiers did, as one hostage put it, “what all Israeli soldiers do in the absence of television cameras.”

“They beat each and every one of us without any reason, they started cursing our religion and making other blasphemous remarks. Afterwards they, using large hammers, smashed all the windows and doors of the building. Then they smashed all the 30 computers, which had been donated from a European country. In short they were Gestapo in real life,” said Musa Abu Salameh, one of the hostages.
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23 dead, 100 hurt in double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv

At least 23 people were killed and 100 others were wounded - seven critically - in a double suicide bombing at around 6:30 P.M. Sunday evening at the Old Central Bus Station in south Tel Aviv.
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Guarantees to perpetuate the occupation

The most dangerous innovation in the American attitude to the settlements shouldn't be sought in their relationship to the guarantees or the problematic timing of the negotiations over the aid. There's a much more profound change in policy here: in the latest discussions of the road map, President Bush rejected the Quartet's position that terror should be fought as if there were no new settlements and the settlements should be frozen as if there were no terror. He set a new precedent, that settlements are not an absolute danger to peace, but rather a matter contingent on outside factors, including domestic American politics. The American decision that a settlement freeze is conditional on Sharon's satisfaction with a cease-fire is, in effect, a legitimization of the deepening of the occupation, perpetuating the war and perhaps a guarantee for continued right-wing rule.
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