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LMNOP Palestine resources page: http://www.webwm.com/LMNOP/palestine.htm ---------------------------------------- The following is a news item posted on CBC NEWS ONLINE at http://cbc.ca/news ____________________________________________________ ISRAELIS DEMOLISHING PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT INFRASTRUCTURE http://cbc.ca/stories/2002/04/10/mideast_infrastructure020410 WebPosted Thu Apr 11 10:52:02 2002 JERUSALEM--Some Palestinians say the Israeli army has done much more than dismantle a terrorist network during its invasion of the West Bank. They say the Israelis are destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian government. Diana Buttu, a Canadian lawyer in the West Bank to advise Palestinian negotiators, says there'll be little government left when the Israelis leave. Diana Buttu "They've defined anything that's Palestinian as terror," she said. "So the Ministry of Education is, in the Israeli government's eyes, terror. So they've destroyed records from the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Health is considered terror. So they've gone after the records of the Ministry of Health." The army has torn apart houses it says were used as bomb factories, and pummelled security buildings used as bases of operations by Palestinian fighters. Police stations across the West Bank have been turned to rubble, police officers having been killed or arrested. Palestinian government destroyed Beyond that, international organizations such as the UN say there has been a systematic effort to destroy the machinery of Palestinian government, ministry by ministry, department by department. At the Palestinian Ministry of Statistics in Ramallah, for example, computers have been destroyed and databases seized. Much of that government infrastructure was paid for by Western aid, and the World Bank estimates it will cost foreign donors, including Canada, $2.7 billion to rebuild. Telecommunications centres, which the Israelis say incite terror, have fallen. Foreign observers say that, far from TV cameras, Israeli engineers blew up government buildings in at least four cities. Shantytowns Palestinian professor Manuel Hassassian says that the Israelis are destroying everything built under Palestinian rule since the 1993 Oslo accord and fears there will be a return to de facto Israeli governance. "We are talking about uprooting the Palestinians and creating conditions where we will end up being red Indians living in basically shantytowns and reservations," he said. Not so, says Israel. In fact, it says the army is doing moderate Palestinian leaders a favour. Ranaan Gissin "Now that there's no terrorism, you can rest assured that there will be sufficient people � people who want to live here, not to die here - that can pick up the pieces," said Ranaan Gissin, Israeli government spokesman. But militant groups such as Hamas also seem poised to fill the vacuum that would be left behind in a collapse of the Palestinian Authority. ____________________ Copyright � 2002 CBC All Rights Reserved http://cbc.ca/ ===== Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace. Weekly peace walks around Lake Merritt in Oakland. Starts & ends at the colonnade between Grand & Lakeshore Avenues, 3 P.M., every Sunday. Info: (510)763-8712, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or http://www.webwm.com/LMNOP __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
