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April 18, 2003/Nisan 16 5763, Vol. 55, No. 34
Activists, army at odds over tactics
MATTHEW GUTMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV - The bad blood between the Israeli army and a group of international pro-Palestinian activists continues to grow as more members of the group are injured in Israeli anti-terror operations.
A British activist was shot in the head April 11 as a group of foreign and Palestinian protesters approached a unit of Israeli tanks posted near the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
The incident ignited a crossfire of words and accusations between the IDF and the International Solidarity Movement.
Thomas Hurndall, 21, from England, suffered a head injury that left him brain dead. He was the third casualty from the International Solidarity Movement in a month.
The ISM is a movement of international activists working for "Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli occupation," according to its mission statement, sometimes through illegal protests and rallies.
Though members of the group call themselves peace activists, they work only to protect Palestinians from Israeli anti-terror actions, making no attempt to protect Israelis from Palestinian violence.
Hurndall was shot when a sniper on an IDF tank allegedly fired on a group of protestors marching toward them in an effort to thwart an IDF incursion into Rafah.
The IDF said a tank fired only one round in the area that day. It had targeted and killed a Palestinian sniper who was hiding in the upper stories of a nearby apartment building, firing at a column of armored vehicles, military sources said.
Still, Hurndall's shooting is a disturbing addition to a string of recent bloody confrontations between the IDF and the ISM.
Only a few hundred yards from where the April 11 incident took place, American activist Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed several weeks ago when she tried to prevent a bulldozer from demolishing a terrorist's home.
Last week Bryan Avery, 24, of Albuquerque, N.M., was shot in the face while walking with a fellow activist in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The IDF said it was not aware that Israeli soldiers had shot Avery, but said soldiers had been targeting Palestinian gunmen in the area.
While the IDF has expressed sorrow at the chain of injuries, it claims ISM activists increasingly cross the line of neutrality. One example occurred on March 27, when IDF forces launched a manhunt for a top Islamic Jihad terrorist in Jenin.
Intelligence information led the IDF to believe that Shadi Sukia was being hidden in a Jenin compound that holds a bank, a Red Cross office and the ISM office.
After combing the entire building and finding nothing, the soldiers asked two ISM activists if they could search their offices.
ISM coordinator Susan Barcley refused. The soldiers insisted, forcing their way in.
The intelligence information proved correct: Sukia had taken shelter with the ISM.
Wallace claims that Barcley found Sukia wet and shivering outside the ISM office, "and asked the boy to come in."
According to the IDF, Sukia is no boy.
"He is a grown man, one of the highest ranking members of the Islamic Jihad in Jenin, responsible for recruiting several suicide bombers, planning bombings himself, laying mines and sniping," an IDF official said.
"All told they gave him a change of clothes and a blanket and a hot cup of tea," said Wallace, adding that the ISM activists had no way of knowing the young man's political affiliations or criminal history when they cared for him.
Nonsense, the IDF responded.
"Many of the ISM activists are nothing short of provocateurs," the IDF source said.
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