New Israeli Rules Adopted in Wake of More Attacks
After three Palestinian attacks on Sunday and early today killed 13 people, the Israeli government banned Palestinian travel through the northern West Bank, further tightening already stringent restrictions.
"Nobody enters, and nobody leaves," Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said of West Bank towns and villages.

The stricter controls came as a study financed by the American government reported significant malnutrition among Palestinian children.

As violence flared again, Israeli helicopters fired rockets tonight at a metal factory in Gaza City that the army said was used to manufacture bombs. Palestinian officials reported that at least three teenagers had been injured in the air raid.

Earlier today the Israeli Army sealed off the southern end of the Gaza Strip, near the turbulent Rafah refugee camp.

With the government under sharp criticism from Israelis for not doing enough to stem terrorism, Mr. Ben-Eliezer promised a further "long list of actions" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would "make the closure much bigger than it is now."

The army is already in control of seven of eight West Bank cities, which it seized six weeks ago after back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem.

But in the last week, Palestinians from the West Bank appear to have evaded the Israeli forces and penetrated the lines of security along the West Bank boundary to carry out at least three suicide attacks.

It is not clear how the travel ban will change life for Palestinians or Israelis, since the army has already hobbled Palestinian movement through the West Bank, declaring that people needed permits to move about. In the cities the army seized, it imposed 24-hour curfews, lifting them only sporadically.

Today Israeli soldiers opened fire on a group of Palestinians defying the curfew in the West Bank city of Nablus, killing a 15-year-old boy, Palestinian officials said. The army said it was checking the report.

In recent days the army has revived a policy of demolishing the homes of militants' relatives, and it is preparing to banish the relatives of suicide attackers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

As it clamped down elsewhere, the army said that it was easing restrictions on Bethlehem and Hebron, also in the West Bank, and that it would take the same step in "all places that remain calm."

[At the United Nations, the General Assembly passed a resolution today, drafted jointly by the European Union and Palestinian envoys, demanding the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces.]

As violence has surged since the killing of a leader of the Islamist group Hamas in an Israeli airstrike two weeks ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has come under sharp attack from rightist politicians and the news media.

The criticism was fed today by disclosures that in three months of construction, the government has managed to build only about 120 feet of fence on the West Bank boundary, along a possible 225-mile route.

Mr. Sharon won office more than a year ago on a promise of peace and security. Those goals may appear more elusive than ever, but Mr. Sharon retains substantial support, partly because Israelis have not been persuaded by any alternative policy or politician.

As travel restrictions tightened, researchers studying malnutrition in the West Bank and Gaza said today that the Israeli closings were contributing to what they called "a distinct humanitarian emergency."

Israeli officials said they were moving to ease Palestinians' predicament where possible, and they said Palestinians' own mismanagement and militancy had made the army's restrictions necessary.

The army said the measures "do not apply to medical and humanitarian needs." But aid groups report great difficulties in moving medicine and other supplies through the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/06/international/middleeast/06MIDE.html