Suicide Bomber Kills One and Injures 12 in Israel
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Islamist group Hamas had promised to retaliate for Israeli incursions this week in the Gaza Strip that left 18 Palestinians dead. Two more Palestinian youths, aged 12 and 18, died this morning, Palestinian hospital officials said, shot by Israeli forces during a raid into the Rafah refugee camp, on the border with Egypt.
The Israeli government did not announce any immediate action in response to today's bombing. But David Baker, an official in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority was doing nothing to stop the attacks. "Israel has become a democracy under the gun," he said. "These attacks have not ceased."
Palestinian officials accused Mr. Sharon of provoking the violence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/10CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Better News for Net Radio Stations
…the passing of the bill by the House holds out promise that allegedly potentially ruinous fees for many Webcasters, especially small ones, could be restructured. The new bill would allow Webcasters who have annual revenues under $250,000 to pay either ten percent of their revenues or seven percent of their expenses—whichever is greater—in royalties, rather than paying per-song fees. Mid-sized Webcasters would also pay fees dependent on their revenues or expenses, rather than per-song fees, but large Webcasters such as AOL would not receive any exemptions. Rates for retroactive fees for small- and mid-sized Webcasters would also be based on revenues, not on individual songs played.
The Librarian of Congress had initially ordered unilateral per-song fees, and that retroactive fees going back to 1998 be paid. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner (R–WI), introduced the Relief for Small Business Webcasters bill in response to that requirement.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,605540,00.asp
…the passing of the bill by the House holds out promise that allegedly potentially ruinous fees for many Webcasters, especially small ones, could be restructured. The new bill would allow Webcasters who have annual revenues under $250,000 to pay either ten percent of their revenues or seven percent of their expenses—whichever is greater—in royalties, rather than paying per-song fees. Mid-sized Webcasters would also pay fees dependent on their revenues or expenses, rather than per-song fees, but large Webcasters such as AOL would not receive any exemptions. Rates for retroactive fees for small- and mid-sized Webcasters would also be based on revenues, not on individual songs played.
The Librarian of Congress had initially ordered unilateral per-song fees, and that retroactive fees going back to 1998 be paid. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner (R–WI), introduced the Relief for Small Business Webcasters bill in response to that requirement.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,605540,00.asp
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Israel Defiantly Warns of More Antiterror Raids in Gaza
Shouldering aside criticism from the Bush administration, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today warned of more Israeli raids into the Gaza Strip like the one that left 16 Palestinians dead on Monday, calling the strategy a necessary bulwark against terrorist attack.
Mr. Sharon expressed regret for the loss of civilian life, but he sounded a defiant note about the operation, in which Israeli armor guarded by helicopter gunships swept into a densely populated town after midnight, trying to harry and intimidate the Islamist group Hamas.
In Gaza, where the army is now experimenting with ever-deeper raids, skirmishes between Israeli forces and militants or rock-throwers are a daily affair at the margins of settlements or military outposts. Today, Israeli troops killed a 12-year-old girl in Rafah, on Gaza's border with Egypt, Palestinian medical officials said. The army said it was checking into the shooting.
Unlike the West Bank, the Gaza Strip is fenced, and Hamas has not succeeded in sending suicide bombers beyond it, Israeli intelligence agents said. But it has taken to firing crude rockets both at Israeli settlements inside Gaza and over the fence, including toward Mr. Sharon's farm in southern Israel.
The last time a Hamas suicide bomber struck, killing six people on a bus in Tel Aviv on Sept. 19, Israel besieged Yasir Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, following a pattern of punishing Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority for attacks by Hamas and other groups.
Israel declared Mr. Arafat irrelevant last December, but it continues to maintain that he is accountable for and capable of reining in violence. His allies have accused the Israeli government of a tacit alliance with Hamas to destroy Mr. Arafat, whom Hamas regards as a temporizing — if not traitorous — compromiser for having negotiated with Israel.
When the army again zeroed in on Mr. Arafat in late September, Mr. Sharon came under sharp domestic criticism. Some said he focused on the wrong target, ignoring the threat from Hamas. Since then, the army has ratcheted up operations in Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/international/middleeast/09MIDE.html
Shouldering aside criticism from the Bush administration, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today warned of more Israeli raids into the Gaza Strip like the one that left 16 Palestinians dead on Monday, calling the strategy a necessary bulwark against terrorist attack.
Mr. Sharon expressed regret for the loss of civilian life, but he sounded a defiant note about the operation, in which Israeli armor guarded by helicopter gunships swept into a densely populated town after midnight, trying to harry and intimidate the Islamist group Hamas.
In Gaza, where the army is now experimenting with ever-deeper raids, skirmishes between Israeli forces and militants or rock-throwers are a daily affair at the margins of settlements or military outposts. Today, Israeli troops killed a 12-year-old girl in Rafah, on Gaza's border with Egypt, Palestinian medical officials said. The army said it was checking into the shooting.
Unlike the West Bank, the Gaza Strip is fenced, and Hamas has not succeeded in sending suicide bombers beyond it, Israeli intelligence agents said. But it has taken to firing crude rockets both at Israeli settlements inside Gaza and over the fence, including toward Mr. Sharon's farm in southern Israel.
The last time a Hamas suicide bomber struck, killing six people on a bus in Tel Aviv on Sept. 19, Israel besieged Yasir Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, following a pattern of punishing Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority for attacks by Hamas and other groups.
Israel declared Mr. Arafat irrelevant last December, but it continues to maintain that he is accountable for and capable of reining in violence. His allies have accused the Israeli government of a tacit alliance with Hamas to destroy Mr. Arafat, whom Hamas regards as a temporizing — if not traitorous — compromiser for having negotiated with Israel.
When the army again zeroed in on Mr. Arafat in late September, Mr. Sharon came under sharp domestic criticism. Some said he focused on the wrong target, ignoring the threat from Hamas. Since then, the army has ratcheted up operations in Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/international/middleeast/09MIDE.html
News: Copyright decision to shape technology
But what the Supreme Court decides in this case, Eldred v. Ashcroft, could create ripple effects that spread throughout the technology industry and shape what kind of software and hardware products are legal to create and sell.
Here's an example. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it's illegal to sell software or hardware that could descramble DVDs, unlock copy-protected CDs, or strip the protection away from Adobe's eBooks. The DMCA has even been used to threaten programmers who write font-manipulation software and researchers who point out security flaws.
As I wrote in a recent column, the DMCA may not be as noxious as some of its detractors claim it is, but any law that would ban software that could be used for both good and bad purposes goes too far. (It would be as nutty as banning all handguns, which Washington, D.C. does, just because some miscreants may use them for ill purposes.) Unfortunately, all court challenges to the "anti-circumvention" sections of the DMCA have failed.
The Supreme Court's eventual decision in the copyright extension case, which will come sometime in the next eight months or so, could change this losing streak. If the judges choose--and this is hardly certain--they could hand down a ruling that dramatically limits the reach of copyright law.
"I think the best case scenario is for them to say the First Amendment is a serious limitation on copyright law so we have to look critically and not permissively at what Congress is doing," says Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who sometimes teaches his copyright law class wearing a T-shirt protesting the copyright extension act. "Then we would know something important. And that would, for instance, breathe new life into the discredited or disrespected First Amendment arguments in the DMCA cases."
Jaszi says the Supreme Court could, if it chose, "bring back the notion that one has to measure congressional judgments about intellectual property policy by a higher-than-normal standard because of the First Amendment stakes. And that's something that the Second Circuit didn't do. That was a very deferential decision."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-960969.html
But what the Supreme Court decides in this case, Eldred v. Ashcroft, could create ripple effects that spread throughout the technology industry and shape what kind of software and hardware products are legal to create and sell.
Here's an example. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it's illegal to sell software or hardware that could descramble DVDs, unlock copy-protected CDs, or strip the protection away from Adobe's eBooks. The DMCA has even been used to threaten programmers who write font-manipulation software and researchers who point out security flaws.
As I wrote in a recent column, the DMCA may not be as noxious as some of its detractors claim it is, but any law that would ban software that could be used for both good and bad purposes goes too far. (It would be as nutty as banning all handguns, which Washington, D.C. does, just because some miscreants may use them for ill purposes.) Unfortunately, all court challenges to the "anti-circumvention" sections of the DMCA have failed.
The Supreme Court's eventual decision in the copyright extension case, which will come sometime in the next eight months or so, could change this losing streak. If the judges choose--and this is hardly certain--they could hand down a ruling that dramatically limits the reach of copyright law.
"I think the best case scenario is for them to say the First Amendment is a serious limitation on copyright law so we have to look critically and not permissively at what Congress is doing," says Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who sometimes teaches his copyright law class wearing a T-shirt protesting the copyright extension act. "Then we would know something important. And that would, for instance, breathe new life into the discredited or disrespected First Amendment arguments in the DMCA cases."
Jaszi says the Supreme Court could, if it chose, "bring back the notion that one has to measure congressional judgments about intellectual property policy by a higher-than-normal standard because of the First Amendment stakes. And that's something that the Second Circuit didn't do. That was a very deferential decision."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-960969.html
Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Sharon Calls Gaza Strike a Success; Says More Will Follow
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today praised an Israeli raid on Monday into the Gaza Strip that left 15 Palestinians dead and dozens wounded, expressing regret for civilian lives lost but brushing aside international criticism as he promised more such attacks.
"It was important, and it was successful," Mr. Sharon said of the mission. "There will be more operations in the Gaza Strip."
Israel has now seized military control of most of the West Bank, and Mr. Sharon has repeatedly suggested recently that he would like to shift his focus to Gaza, the stronghold of the Islamist group Hamas and home to about 1.2 million Palestinian and 7,000 Israeli settlers. Late last month Mr. Sharon said that stepped-up operations there were only a matter of when the army, now stretched thin, could "concentrate the appropriate troops."
Today, after meeting here with Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, Mr. Sharon said, "There is a need to be certain that terrorist organizations will not have the freedom to carry out intentional murder."
The Israeli Army is deeply enmeshed in the West Bank, controlling six of the eight major Palestinian cities and towns and maintaining curfews and strict travel restrictions. Today Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded four people traveling in a car near the West Bank city of Hebron, prompting Israeli forces to comb a nearby village for suspects and to again impose a curfew on Hebron.
In the West Bank city of Jenin, Israeli troops enforcing the curfew wounded four Palestinians, two of them teenagers, hospital officials said.
As the West Bank offensive continues, the army is experimenting with new kinds of assaults in Gaza.
Monday's operation, into the densely populated town of Khan Yunis, marked a new style of mission, senior military officials said, one intended more to press Hamas generally than to hunt down wanted men or weapons factories. Brig. Gen.
Yisrael Ziv, the commander of Israeli forces in the area, said that the mission was supposed to "interfere with their self-confidence."
"Hamas is under a lot of stress lately because of our operations," Brigadier General Ziv said. He acknowledged that none of those killed were wanted by Israel. No soldiers were injured.
Unlike the West Bank, the Gaza Strip is fenced, and Hamas has not succeeded in sending suicide bombers beyond it, Israeli intelligence agents said. But it has taken to firing crudely made rockets from there, both at Israeli settlements inside Gaza and over the fence, including toward Mr. Sharon's farm in southern Israel.
Israel has hunted down and arrested or killed many Hamas militants over the course of the two-year conflict, but it has not yet put the same kind of relentless pressure on the organization itself as it has on the Palestinian Authority.
The last time a Hamas suicide bomber struck, killing six people on a bus in Tel Aviv on Sept.
19, Israel besieged Mr. Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, following a pattern of punishing the Palestinian leader and the Palestinian Authority for attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups.
The Israeli government declared Mr. Arafat irrelevant last December, but it has continued to maintain that he is accountable for and capable of reigning in violence. Allies of Mr. Arafat accused the Israeli government of a tacit alliance with Hamas to destroy the Palestinian leader, whom Hamas regards as a temporizing if not traitorous compromiser for having negotiated with Israel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08CND-MIDE.html
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today praised an Israeli raid on Monday into the Gaza Strip that left 15 Palestinians dead and dozens wounded, expressing regret for civilian lives lost but brushing aside international criticism as he promised more such attacks.
"It was important, and it was successful," Mr. Sharon said of the mission. "There will be more operations in the Gaza Strip."
Israel has now seized military control of most of the West Bank, and Mr. Sharon has repeatedly suggested recently that he would like to shift his focus to Gaza, the stronghold of the Islamist group Hamas and home to about 1.2 million Palestinian and 7,000 Israeli settlers. Late last month Mr. Sharon said that stepped-up operations there were only a matter of when the army, now stretched thin, could "concentrate the appropriate troops."
Today, after meeting here with Israel's president, Moshe Katsav, Mr. Sharon said, "There is a need to be certain that terrorist organizations will not have the freedom to carry out intentional murder."
The Israeli Army is deeply enmeshed in the West Bank, controlling six of the eight major Palestinian cities and towns and maintaining curfews and strict travel restrictions. Today Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded four people traveling in a car near the West Bank city of Hebron, prompting Israeli forces to comb a nearby village for suspects and to again impose a curfew on Hebron.
In the West Bank city of Jenin, Israeli troops enforcing the curfew wounded four Palestinians, two of them teenagers, hospital officials said.
As the West Bank offensive continues, the army is experimenting with new kinds of assaults in Gaza.
Monday's operation, into the densely populated town of Khan Yunis, marked a new style of mission, senior military officials said, one intended more to press Hamas generally than to hunt down wanted men or weapons factories. Brig. Gen.
Yisrael Ziv, the commander of Israeli forces in the area, said that the mission was supposed to "interfere with their self-confidence."
"Hamas is under a lot of stress lately because of our operations," Brigadier General Ziv said. He acknowledged that none of those killed were wanted by Israel. No soldiers were injured.
Unlike the West Bank, the Gaza Strip is fenced, and Hamas has not succeeded in sending suicide bombers beyond it, Israeli intelligence agents said. But it has taken to firing crudely made rockets from there, both at Israeli settlements inside Gaza and over the fence, including toward Mr. Sharon's farm in southern Israel.
Israel has hunted down and arrested or killed many Hamas militants over the course of the two-year conflict, but it has not yet put the same kind of relentless pressure on the organization itself as it has on the Palestinian Authority.
The last time a Hamas suicide bomber struck, killing six people on a bus in Tel Aviv on Sept.
19, Israel besieged Mr. Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, following a pattern of punishing the Palestinian leader and the Palestinian Authority for attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups.
The Israeli government declared Mr. Arafat irrelevant last December, but it has continued to maintain that he is accountable for and capable of reigning in violence. Allies of Mr. Arafat accused the Israeli government of a tacit alliance with Hamas to destroy the Palestinian leader, whom Hamas regards as a temporizing if not traitorous compromiser for having negotiated with Israel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08CND-MIDE.html
Israelis, in New Strategy, Raid Gaza Town, Killing 13
In what it called a new strategy to place the Islamist group Hamas on the defensive, the Israeli Army sent dozens of tanks backed by helicopter gunships into this densely packed Gaza town early today, killing at least 13 people.
Most of the dead were victims of a single missile fired into a crowded dirt road. The raid drew an unusual rebuke from the Bush administration, which said Israel was endangering civilians.
The missile gashed the median strip of Gamal Abdel Nasser street here and shattered windows three stories above it. Hours later, patches of the gold-colored sand were still crimson mud.
Salaam Abu Salaam, 12, rushed up to a stranger with a jagged piece of shrapnel. Asked why Israel had conducted the raid, he said, "They hate us."
In Washington, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said: "We're deeply troubled by the reports of Israeli actions in Gaza over the weekend that resulted in deaths and wounding of many Palestinian civilians. While the precise details still remain uncertain, Israeli operations were undertaken in crowded civilian areas and involved firing on a medical facility."
The apparent Israeli decision to widen its military offensive from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip seems certain to inflame anger across the Arab world.
Unlike other recent Israeli attacks, this one did not have the specific aim of killing wanted men or destroying weapons factories. Calling Khan Yunis a Hamas stronghold, the army said the mission was part of a new strategy of putting pressure on Hamas, which has frequently launched crude rockets from the Gaza Strip.
Although Israel has tracked down and killed Hamas leaders, it has generally responded to Hamas bombings of Israeli civilians with punitive attacks on Yasir Arafat's governing Palestinian Authority.
More than 100 people were injured in the raid, with some victims in critical condition with shrapnel wounds, Palestinian hospital officials said. The dead included a 14-year-old boy and a woman in her 40's, the officials said.
Israeli troops also fired machine guns and semiautomatic weapons toward Nasser Hospital here, where most of the wounded were taken, hitting its courtyard. The army said its soldiers had fired in response to mortar shelling. At least three people were injured, and one was reported to have been killed.
Palestinian officials said all of the dead were civilians. The Israeli Army said most of them were armed men. Some Israeli officials expressed consternation over the action, saying they feared that it could embarrass President Bush on the day of his speech on Iraq.
The aim of the Israeli government was to sabotage truce talks among Palestinians, the Palestinian officials said, by provoking Hamas, which promised bloody retaliation.
The Bush administration called on Israel to investigate the deaths and said it expected "immediate steps" to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said through a spokesman that firing into a crowd of civilians could have "no legal or moral justification." He said the attack "could lead to a further escalation while increasing the sense of vulnerability and insecurity among both the Palestinians and Israelis."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.htmla>
In what it called a new strategy to place the Islamist group Hamas on the defensive, the Israeli Army sent dozens of tanks backed by helicopter gunships into this densely packed Gaza town early today, killing at least 13 people.
Most of the dead were victims of a single missile fired into a crowded dirt road. The raid drew an unusual rebuke from the Bush administration, which said Israel was endangering civilians.
The missile gashed the median strip of Gamal Abdel Nasser street here and shattered windows three stories above it. Hours later, patches of the gold-colored sand were still crimson mud.
Salaam Abu Salaam, 12, rushed up to a stranger with a jagged piece of shrapnel. Asked why Israel had conducted the raid, he said, "They hate us."
In Washington, Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said: "We're deeply troubled by the reports of Israeli actions in Gaza over the weekend that resulted in deaths and wounding of many Palestinian civilians. While the precise details still remain uncertain, Israeli operations were undertaken in crowded civilian areas and involved firing on a medical facility."
The apparent Israeli decision to widen its military offensive from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip seems certain to inflame anger across the Arab world.
Unlike other recent Israeli attacks, this one did not have the specific aim of killing wanted men or destroying weapons factories. Calling Khan Yunis a Hamas stronghold, the army said the mission was part of a new strategy of putting pressure on Hamas, which has frequently launched crude rockets from the Gaza Strip.
Although Israel has tracked down and killed Hamas leaders, it has generally responded to Hamas bombings of Israeli civilians with punitive attacks on Yasir Arafat's governing Palestinian Authority.
More than 100 people were injured in the raid, with some victims in critical condition with shrapnel wounds, Palestinian hospital officials said. The dead included a 14-year-old boy and a woman in her 40's, the officials said.
Israeli troops also fired machine guns and semiautomatic weapons toward Nasser Hospital here, where most of the wounded were taken, hitting its courtyard. The army said its soldiers had fired in response to mortar shelling. At least three people were injured, and one was reported to have been killed.
Palestinian officials said all of the dead were civilians. The Israeli Army said most of them were armed men. Some Israeli officials expressed consternation over the action, saying they feared that it could embarrass President Bush on the day of his speech on Iraq.
The aim of the Israeli government was to sabotage truce talks among Palestinians, the Palestinian officials said, by provoking Hamas, which promised bloody retaliation.
The Bush administration called on Israel to investigate the deaths and said it expected "immediate steps" to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said through a spokesman that firing into a crowd of civilians could have "no legal or moral justification." He said the attack "could lead to a further escalation while increasing the sense of vulnerability and insecurity among both the Palestinians and Israelis."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.htmla>
In Olive Groves of the West Bank, a Harvest of Fear
Fear kept the olive pickers off the terraced hillsides today in this village set among the groves and stony hills of the northern West Bank.
On an olive-clad slope facing a ridge studded with outposts stretching from the Jewish settlement of Itamar, a few Palestinian villagers hesitantly ventured out to the spot where their neighbor, Hani Bani Minyeh, 24, was shot and killed on Sunday.
Settlers who had arrived in the valley below opened fire to disperse Palestinians harvesting from their olive trees nearby, killing Mr. Bani Minyeh as he tried to scramble up a stone terrace, the villagers said. Another man was wounded.
As settlers drove up the valley in a small tractor today, villagers quickly moved back, out of sight.
October marks the start of the olive-picking season in the West Bank. But the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is casting a shadow over the harvest, which sustains many villagers. This year the yield of the olive trees, which varies annually, is high, but the conflict between the Jewish settlers and Palestinians is making it harder in many places to collect the fruit.
A few miles away from Aqraba today, in the village of Yasuf, Muhammad Obeid, 49, gazed from a distance at his olive trees dotting a hillside under a cluster of trailers, an extension of the Jewish settlement of Tapuah. On three days last week, he said, armed settlers from Tapuah picked olives from dozens of his trees as he watched helplessly from the village.
"This is theft," he said, adding that similar incidents were reported in two other villages in the area.
The fatal shooting on Sunday, villagers in Aqraba said, came after settlers from the Itamar outposts came down to the valley with two tractors and other vehicles to plow a plot of village land more than a mile from the outposts above.
Ghaleb Mayadmeh, Aqraba's mayor, said it was the first time settlers had fired on villagers picking olives in the area, apparently in an effort to put the groves off limits.
On Saturday, another group of olive pickers here was assaulted, villagers said. Atef Bani Jaber, 40, who had a black eye and a bandage on his forehead, said settlers had attacked him and other men, hitting him with a rifle and beating the others before making off with the day's harvest.
Rabbi Avi Ronsky, who is the leader of a yeshiva in Itamar, said the settlers who opened fire on Sunday reported that they had been stoned by the villagers and sensed that they were in danger.
Rabbi Ronsky said today that Palestinians, including olive pickers, had to be kept a safe distance from the settlement and its residents, given the recent history of deadly attacks on Itamar, which have killed nine people. A Palestinian gunman killed a mother, three of her children and a man in an attack on the settlement in June.
Villagers said Israeli soldiers had come to Yasuf and Aqraba, but had failed to stop the settlers. An army spokesman said today that the army wanted the olive harvest to proceed, but that in order to protect both villagers and settlers, the times and locations of the work had to be coordinated with the army. A police spokesman said the recent incidents were still under investigation.
At Yasuf, villagers said groups of settlers from Tapuah had entered their lands on three days last week to pick olives from trees near the settlement — a report confirmed by the settlers. The aim of the action was "to send a message: don't come near, because there's nothing to come for," said Daniel Shukrun, the secretary of Tapuah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08WEST.html
Fear kept the olive pickers off the terraced hillsides today in this village set among the groves and stony hills of the northern West Bank.
On an olive-clad slope facing a ridge studded with outposts stretching from the Jewish settlement of Itamar, a few Palestinian villagers hesitantly ventured out to the spot where their neighbor, Hani Bani Minyeh, 24, was shot and killed on Sunday.
Settlers who had arrived in the valley below opened fire to disperse Palestinians harvesting from their olive trees nearby, killing Mr. Bani Minyeh as he tried to scramble up a stone terrace, the villagers said. Another man was wounded.
As settlers drove up the valley in a small tractor today, villagers quickly moved back, out of sight.
October marks the start of the olive-picking season in the West Bank. But the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is casting a shadow over the harvest, which sustains many villagers. This year the yield of the olive trees, which varies annually, is high, but the conflict between the Jewish settlers and Palestinians is making it harder in many places to collect the fruit.
A few miles away from Aqraba today, in the village of Yasuf, Muhammad Obeid, 49, gazed from a distance at his olive trees dotting a hillside under a cluster of trailers, an extension of the Jewish settlement of Tapuah. On three days last week, he said, armed settlers from Tapuah picked olives from dozens of his trees as he watched helplessly from the village.
"This is theft," he said, adding that similar incidents were reported in two other villages in the area.
The fatal shooting on Sunday, villagers in Aqraba said, came after settlers from the Itamar outposts came down to the valley with two tractors and other vehicles to plow a plot of village land more than a mile from the outposts above.
Ghaleb Mayadmeh, Aqraba's mayor, said it was the first time settlers had fired on villagers picking olives in the area, apparently in an effort to put the groves off limits.
On Saturday, another group of olive pickers here was assaulted, villagers said. Atef Bani Jaber, 40, who had a black eye and a bandage on his forehead, said settlers had attacked him and other men, hitting him with a rifle and beating the others before making off with the day's harvest.
Rabbi Avi Ronsky, who is the leader of a yeshiva in Itamar, said the settlers who opened fire on Sunday reported that they had been stoned by the villagers and sensed that they were in danger.
Rabbi Ronsky said today that Palestinians, including olive pickers, had to be kept a safe distance from the settlement and its residents, given the recent history of deadly attacks on Itamar, which have killed nine people. A Palestinian gunman killed a mother, three of her children and a man in an attack on the settlement in June.
Villagers said Israeli soldiers had come to Yasuf and Aqraba, but had failed to stop the settlers. An army spokesman said today that the army wanted the olive harvest to proceed, but that in order to protect both villagers and settlers, the times and locations of the work had to be coordinated with the army. A police spokesman said the recent incidents were still under investigation.
At Yasuf, villagers said groups of settlers from Tapuah had entered their lands on three days last week to pick olives from trees near the settlement — a report confirmed by the settlers. The aim of the action was "to send a message: don't come near, because there's nothing to come for," said Daniel Shukrun, the secretary of Tapuah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/08/international/middleeast/08WEST.html
Monday, October 07, 2002
12 Palestinians Killed in Gaza Raid
Israeli tanks backed by helicopters raided a neighborhood in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis early today, killing 12 Palestinians, including 10 who died when a missile blasted into a crowd gathered in the street, Palestinian officials said.
Hospital officials said all the dead, aged from 14 to to 52, were civilians and that up to another 100 were wounded, 25 of them critically.
Another four people were injured, Palestinians said, when the Israelis fired at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where most of the wounded had been taken. The military said the shots were in response to mortar gire.
The military said it initiated the raid after Palestinian militants fired a rocket at a Jewish settlement near Khan Yunis, causing no casualties. It said its forces had uncovered several mortar shells and arrested one Palestinian militant in the operation.
Palestinian witnesses told news agencies that a crowd of about 200 ventured out of their houses and gathered near a local mosque when it appeared that the Israelis were pulling out.
Brig. Gen. Israel Ziff, the Israeli Army commander in the area, described the crowd as armed men.
"They fired a lot and threw grenades," he said. "The helicopter aimed at this armed group and hit them."
Both Hamas and Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement vowed revenge for the attack. A Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying: "Everyone should know that as our people were not safe in Khan Yunis, so Israelis will not be safe in Tel Aviv. We will strike everywhere."
Israel's deputy defense minister, Weizman Shiri, said he was sorry if civilians were hurt. "But what can we do?" he said on Israel Army Radio. "This is war."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/international/middleeast/07CND-MIDE.html
Israeli tanks backed by helicopters raided a neighborhood in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis early today, killing 12 Palestinians, including 10 who died when a missile blasted into a crowd gathered in the street, Palestinian officials said.
Hospital officials said all the dead, aged from 14 to to 52, were civilians and that up to another 100 were wounded, 25 of them critically.
Another four people were injured, Palestinians said, when the Israelis fired at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where most of the wounded had been taken. The military said the shots were in response to mortar gire.
The military said it initiated the raid after Palestinian militants fired a rocket at a Jewish settlement near Khan Yunis, causing no casualties. It said its forces had uncovered several mortar shells and arrested one Palestinian militant in the operation.
Palestinian witnesses told news agencies that a crowd of about 200 ventured out of their houses and gathered near a local mosque when it appeared that the Israelis were pulling out.
Brig. Gen. Israel Ziff, the Israeli Army commander in the area, described the crowd as armed men.
"They fired a lot and threw grenades," he said. "The helicopter aimed at this armed group and hit them."
Both Hamas and Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement vowed revenge for the attack. A Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying: "Everyone should know that as our people were not safe in Khan Yunis, so Israelis will not be safe in Tel Aviv. We will strike everywhere."
Israel's deputy defense minister, Weizman Shiri, said he was sorry if civilians were hurt. "But what can we do?" he said on Israel Army Radio. "This is war."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/international/middleeast/07CND-MIDE.html
Angered by U.S., Palestinians Act on Jerusalem
At a meeting suffused with anger over United States Congressional legislation declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, the Palestinian parliament today ratified a bill signed by Yasir Arafat designating the city as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The parliament also gave Mr. Arafat an extra month to appoint a new cabinet, postponing a central goal of the proponents of Palestinian democratic change.
Last week, President Bush signed the legislation, a $4 billion State Department authorization bill for the new fiscal year. Mr. Bush said he was not bound by its provision regarding Jerusalem, which stipulated that no money could be spent on official United States documents that listed Israel without identifying this disputed city as its capital.
But news of the American legislation has provoked anger well beyond the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, said the measure was "pouring oil on the fire."
Thousands of Palestinians have demonstrated against the legislation in recent days. Some do not seem to have understood the administration's position that it does not mark a change in policy. Others say Mr. Bush's signature guarantees that it will become policy sooner or later.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian parliament, said of the American measure, "It's a clear case of congressmen rushing in where angels fear to tread."
Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for Mr. Arafat, called the American legislation particularly threatening to Palestinians in light of Israel's continuing construction of settlements around Jerusalem. "This will go down in history as the gravest mistake of this administration vis-Ã -vis the peace efforts here," he said.
Members of parliament said they gave Mr. Arafat more time to form a government because of Israel's recent 10-day siege of his compound. The siege ended a week ago at the urging of the Bush administration, which said it was undermining Palestinian reform and its own campaign to rally support against Iraq.
"This was a direct blow to the reform efforts and to the timetable we had set up," Dr. Ashrawi said, adding in reference to Mr. Arafat that it "bought the president more time."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/international/middleeast/07JERU.html
At a meeting suffused with anger over United States Congressional legislation declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, the Palestinian parliament today ratified a bill signed by Yasir Arafat designating the city as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The parliament also gave Mr. Arafat an extra month to appoint a new cabinet, postponing a central goal of the proponents of Palestinian democratic change.
Last week, President Bush signed the legislation, a $4 billion State Department authorization bill for the new fiscal year. Mr. Bush said he was not bound by its provision regarding Jerusalem, which stipulated that no money could be spent on official United States documents that listed Israel without identifying this disputed city as its capital.
But news of the American legislation has provoked anger well beyond the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, said the measure was "pouring oil on the fire."
Thousands of Palestinians have demonstrated against the legislation in recent days. Some do not seem to have understood the administration's position that it does not mark a change in policy. Others say Mr. Bush's signature guarantees that it will become policy sooner or later.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian parliament, said of the American measure, "It's a clear case of congressmen rushing in where angels fear to tread."
Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for Mr. Arafat, called the American legislation particularly threatening to Palestinians in light of Israel's continuing construction of settlements around Jerusalem. "This will go down in history as the gravest mistake of this administration vis-Ã -vis the peace efforts here," he said.
Members of parliament said they gave Mr. Arafat more time to form a government because of Israel's recent 10-day siege of his compound. The siege ended a week ago at the urging of the Bush administration, which said it was undermining Palestinian reform and its own campaign to rally support against Iraq.
"This was a direct blow to the reform efforts and to the timetable we had set up," Dr. Ashrawi said, adding in reference to Mr. Arafat that it "bought the president more time."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/international/middleeast/07JERU.html
Report Calls for Plan of Sharing Data to Prevent Terror
Toward that end, the report, "Protecting America's Freedom in an Information Age," strongly endorses giving responsibility for analyzing such information not to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but to a new domestic intelligence center inside President Bush's planned Department of Homeland Security. Legislation to create the department is mired in Congressional wrangling over such issues as whether labor laws should apply to the agency's employees.
The study also calls upon President Bush to devise new guidelines on what information federal agencies may and may not collect about individuals in the United States and with whom, and under what circumstances, such data may be shared.
Finally, it warns that while Washington must play a critical role in gathering and analyzing data aimed at preventing terror, state and local officials will inevitably provide much of the information needed to protect the nation. Information systems that exclude them, or prevent them from receiving and contributing to such federal data, are destined to fail, the study concludes.
Unless information provided by state and local officials, as well as the private sector, is shared with Washington, "we may wind up getting all of the disadvantages of invasion of privacy with none of the national security gains," conclude the task force's co-chairmen, Zoë Baird, the president of the New York-based Markle Foundation, and James L. Barksdale, a businessman and former chief executive of Netscape.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/national/07HOME.html
Toward that end, the report, "Protecting America's Freedom in an Information Age," strongly endorses giving responsibility for analyzing such information not to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but to a new domestic intelligence center inside President Bush's planned Department of Homeland Security. Legislation to create the department is mired in Congressional wrangling over such issues as whether labor laws should apply to the agency's employees.
The study also calls upon President Bush to devise new guidelines on what information federal agencies may and may not collect about individuals in the United States and with whom, and under what circumstances, such data may be shared.
Finally, it warns that while Washington must play a critical role in gathering and analyzing data aimed at preventing terror, state and local officials will inevitably provide much of the information needed to protect the nation. Information systems that exclude them, or prevent them from receiving and contributing to such federal data, are destined to fail, the study concludes.
Unless information provided by state and local officials, as well as the private sector, is shared with Washington, "we may wind up getting all of the disadvantages of invasion of privacy with none of the national security gains," conclude the task force's co-chairmen, Zoë Baird, the president of the New York-based Markle Foundation, and James L. Barksdale, a businessman and former chief executive of Netscape.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/national/07HOME.html
Law Bars a National System for Tracing Bullets and Shells
The technology exists to create a national ballistic fingerprint system that would enable law enforcement officials to trace bullets recovered from shootings, like those fired by the Washington-area sniper, to a suspect.
Such a system would have been of great use in the Washington case, in which six people were shot to death, because so far bullet fragments are virtually the only evidence.
But because of opposition by the gun industry and the National Rifle Association, only two states have moved to set up a ballistic fingerprint system, and Congress has prohibited a national program, experts say.
"I definitely think that the technology is there, and it has been refined to the point where it is cost effective," said Joe Vince, a former chief of the crime guns analysis branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
"It would not be an imposition on the manufacturers or law enforcement or citizens, so I'm all for it," said Mr. Vince, who is now president of Crime Gun Solutions, a consulting company in Frederick, Md.
Now, the police can tell only whether bullet fragments or shell casings found at a crime scene match one another and come from the same gun. This information helps establish whether only one weapon was involved.
But without the gun itself, the police cannot go the next step and use this information to try to trace the shooter.
Even the technology that enables the firearms bureau to match bullet fragments or shell casings to one gun is new. A system was installed in 1999 after encouragement by the Clinton administration, Mr. Vince and other experts said.
This system, known as the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, optically scans the markings on bullets or shell casings, converting them into an electronic signature. This information is stored in a database and can be retrieved by computers in 235 police departments around the nation.
Gun control advocates and some law enforcement authorities like Mr. Vince have long advocated taking the next step, requiring gun manufacturers to keep an electronic record of the markings from bullets and shell casings when new guns are test fired. This data would be kept with the serial numbers of the guns.
With this information, the agency would be able to trace bullets and shell casings found at a shooting site to the gun maker and eventually to the buyer, said Mr. Vince and another former high ranking firearms bureau official.
But the National Rifle Association has opposed this, calling it tantamount to a national gun registry. The group succeeded in getting a provision in the 1968 federal Gun Control Act outlawing any national gun registry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/national/07GUNS.html
The technology exists to create a national ballistic fingerprint system that would enable law enforcement officials to trace bullets recovered from shootings, like those fired by the Washington-area sniper, to a suspect.
Such a system would have been of great use in the Washington case, in which six people were shot to death, because so far bullet fragments are virtually the only evidence.
But because of opposition by the gun industry and the National Rifle Association, only two states have moved to set up a ballistic fingerprint system, and Congress has prohibited a national program, experts say.
"I definitely think that the technology is there, and it has been refined to the point where it is cost effective," said Joe Vince, a former chief of the crime guns analysis branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
"It would not be an imposition on the manufacturers or law enforcement or citizens, so I'm all for it," said Mr. Vince, who is now president of Crime Gun Solutions, a consulting company in Frederick, Md.
Now, the police can tell only whether bullet fragments or shell casings found at a crime scene match one another and come from the same gun. This information helps establish whether only one weapon was involved.
But without the gun itself, the police cannot go the next step and use this information to try to trace the shooter.
Even the technology that enables the firearms bureau to match bullet fragments or shell casings to one gun is new. A system was installed in 1999 after encouragement by the Clinton administration, Mr. Vince and other experts said.
This system, known as the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, optically scans the markings on bullets or shell casings, converting them into an electronic signature. This information is stored in a database and can be retrieved by computers in 235 police departments around the nation.
Gun control advocates and some law enforcement authorities like Mr. Vince have long advocated taking the next step, requiring gun manufacturers to keep an electronic record of the markings from bullets and shell casings when new guns are test fired. This data would be kept with the serial numbers of the guns.
With this information, the agency would be able to trace bullets and shell casings found at a shooting site to the gun maker and eventually to the buyer, said Mr. Vince and another former high ranking firearms bureau official.
But the National Rifle Association has opposed this, calling it tantamount to a national gun registry. The group succeeded in getting a provision in the 1968 federal Gun Control Act outlawing any national gun registry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/national/07GUNS.html
Daily Nexus Online :: Music Industry Busts ResNet Users
The Record Industry Association has been notifying students on campuses nationwide who have been caught illegally sharing music files through programs such as Morpheus and Aimster to cease their activities. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, copyright holders can require anyone sharing their materials to stop doing so. The most common method of distribution is through MP3s, a file format used to store music digitally.
At UCSB, over 50 notices have been sent to students caught sharing copyrighted music since the beginning of this Fall Quarter, ResNet Coordinator Curtis Cline said. The Record Industry Association sends their notices to ResNet, the Internet service provider for the campus. The ResNet staff then contacts the student with the illegally shared material on their computer and if the material is not removed within 24 hours, the student's ResNet access can be shut down.
Asst. Director of Housing and Residential Services George Gregg said ResNet does not monitor music-sharing at all, but that the music industry has no such inhibitions.
"We don't believe in monitoring the network as a matter of principle," he said. "We aren't Big Brother, but that is not the attitude the copyright holders have."
The Electron Trail
Many students do not even realize that they are sharing the files on their computer, which can then be downloaded by others on the network, Cline said.
"They're running a program on their computer that allows them to gather and find music," he said. "But what a lot of students don't realize is it catalogues the music on their computer, searches the hard drive, finds all the music and offers it to the Internet for download."
Because these programs also display the Internet protocol address from which the files are being downloaded, it is very easy for people from the music industry to search for a popular song and record the addresses of the people who have it.
"The tracing-back art is very simple," Cline said.
Although downloading files is illegal, it is possible to avoid being noticed, Gregg said. Because students can only be caught serving or providing files, they can turn off the sharing option on their computers to avoid negative sanctions and retain the ability to download.
"[The students] could still have their MP3s on their computer, but if they aren't sharing it to the world, they're invisible," Gregg said.
As a service provider, ResNet is required to comply with the copyright holders and restrictions set by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Cline said.
"If we didn't take the actions that we are required to take under the DMCA, we could be in very serious trouble," he said. "The DMCA provides protection to service providers. As long as [we] service providers conform to the rules they've laid out, it limits our responsibility and liability. That's why we have to take it very seriously."
The DMCA defines infringement as an action in which an individual or group "makes, has made, or imports, for sale or use in trade, any infringing article" or "sells or distributes for sale or for use in trade any such infringing article."
An infringing article is "any article the design of which has been copied from a design protected under this chapter [of the DMCA], without the consent of the owner of the protected design."
While students are told that they must remove specific music files once they have been contacted or be disconnected, the consequences for continued sharing are vague. Undeclared freshman Diana Pedder received notification on two separate occasions that music she had was illegal.
"They said if it happens again they might have to turn off my whole Internet," she said, "But it happened again and they still haven't. I just stopped sharing after that and haven't had any problems since."
UC Berkeley, which has also experienced problems with students' illegal downloads, follows the same ResNet procedure when the Record Industry Association gives them notification of music sharing on campus, Gregg said.
"But they haven't had a surge of notifications, or at least haven't noticed a surge like we've had," he said.
http://www.ucsbdailynexus.com/news/1969/1688.html
The Record Industry Association has been notifying students on campuses nationwide who have been caught illegally sharing music files through programs such as Morpheus and Aimster to cease their activities. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, copyright holders can require anyone sharing their materials to stop doing so. The most common method of distribution is through MP3s, a file format used to store music digitally.
At UCSB, over 50 notices have been sent to students caught sharing copyrighted music since the beginning of this Fall Quarter, ResNet Coordinator Curtis Cline said. The Record Industry Association sends their notices to ResNet, the Internet service provider for the campus. The ResNet staff then contacts the student with the illegally shared material on their computer and if the material is not removed within 24 hours, the student's ResNet access can be shut down.
Asst. Director of Housing and Residential Services George Gregg said ResNet does not monitor music-sharing at all, but that the music industry has no such inhibitions.
"We don't believe in monitoring the network as a matter of principle," he said. "We aren't Big Brother, but that is not the attitude the copyright holders have."
The Electron Trail
Many students do not even realize that they are sharing the files on their computer, which can then be downloaded by others on the network, Cline said.
"They're running a program on their computer that allows them to gather and find music," he said. "But what a lot of students don't realize is it catalogues the music on their computer, searches the hard drive, finds all the music and offers it to the Internet for download."
Because these programs also display the Internet protocol address from which the files are being downloaded, it is very easy for people from the music industry to search for a popular song and record the addresses of the people who have it.
"The tracing-back art is very simple," Cline said.
Although downloading files is illegal, it is possible to avoid being noticed, Gregg said. Because students can only be caught serving or providing files, they can turn off the sharing option on their computers to avoid negative sanctions and retain the ability to download.
"[The students] could still have their MP3s on their computer, but if they aren't sharing it to the world, they're invisible," Gregg said.
As a service provider, ResNet is required to comply with the copyright holders and restrictions set by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Cline said.
"If we didn't take the actions that we are required to take under the DMCA, we could be in very serious trouble," he said. "The DMCA provides protection to service providers. As long as [we] service providers conform to the rules they've laid out, it limits our responsibility and liability. That's why we have to take it very seriously."
The DMCA defines infringement as an action in which an individual or group "makes, has made, or imports, for sale or use in trade, any infringing article" or "sells or distributes for sale or for use in trade any such infringing article."
An infringing article is "any article the design of which has been copied from a design protected under this chapter [of the DMCA], without the consent of the owner of the protected design."
While students are told that they must remove specific music files once they have been contacted or be disconnected, the consequences for continued sharing are vague. Undeclared freshman Diana Pedder received notification on two separate occasions that music she had was illegal.
"They said if it happens again they might have to turn off my whole Internet," she said, "But it happened again and they still haven't. I just stopped sharing after that and haven't had any problems since."
UC Berkeley, which has also experienced problems with students' illegal downloads, follows the same ResNet procedure when the Record Industry Association gives them notification of music sharing on campus, Gregg said.
"But they haven't had a surge of notifications, or at least haven't noticed a surge like we've had," he said.
http://www.ucsbdailynexus.com/news/1969/1688.html
Sunday, October 06, 2002
Amnesty International - Library - Middle East: Israel and the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority: Killing the future: Children in the line of fire
KILLINGS OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN
The alarming pattern of killing of Palestinian children by the IDF was established at the outset of the intifada and has continued. On the second day of the intifada, on 30 September 2000, four children were killed by IDF fire.(6) The following day another four children aged between 12 and 17 were again killed by other security services. Within a month some 30 Palestinian children had been killed by IDF fire and by the end of the year 2000 the number was over 80.(7)
The rate at which Palestinian children were being killed decreased slightly during 2001 but increased again in 2002. In the first seven months of 2002 alone, more than 100 children were killed by IDF fire and the age of the victims was significantly lower than in the previous two years: in 2002, some 48% of the children killed were 12 years old or younger, as compared with some 35% in 2001 and about 13% in 2000.
In the first months of the intifada, the majority of child victims were killed as a result of the unlawful and excessive use of lethal force in response to demonstrations and stone-throwing incidents, when the lives of IDF soldiers were not at risk. In 2002 the majority were those children killed when the IDF randomly opened fire, or shelled or bombarded residential neighbourhoods in Palestinian towns and villages. Most of these children were killed when there was no exchange of fire and in circumstances in which the lives of the soldiers were not at risk.
During the first months of the intifada children were mostly killed during stone-throwing demonstrations, though in many cases they appear to have been bystanders during these demonstrations.
Children killed by flechettes and booby-traps
Several children have been killed by flechette shells or explosive devices used by the IDF in densely populated areas. Flechette shells are 120mm shells filled with up to 5,000 potentially lethal five-centimetre long steel darts or flechettes. Although not illegal per se under international law, such weapons should never be used in populated areas. In a visit to Khan Yunis in September 2001, Amnesty International delegates saw flechettes embedded in the wall of a house where 14 people lived, most of them children.
On 22 November 2001 five boys from the Istal family were killed by a booby trap device as they walked to school in Khan Yunis: six-year-old Akram Abd al-Karim al-Istal; Muhammad Na'im Abd al-Karim al-Istal, age 14; Umar Idris al-Istal, age 13; Anis Idris al-Istal, 11; and Muhammad Salman al-Istal, also 11. Amnesty International delegates visited the site on 1 February 2002. The IDF at first denied responsibility for the explosion but subsequently admitted having placed the device there in the hope that it might detonate against armed Palestinians who sometimes shot during the night from the area. Such a device should never have been placed in such a public location, or at least should have been immediately defused before morning, as this is an area where many people passed, especially children on their way to school.
Children killed as a result of the demolition of houses
In Jenin, Nablus and other places the IDF bulldozed a number of houses while residents, including children, were still inside. On other occasions the IDF used explosives to blow up houses without evacuating the surrounding houses, which were also destroyed or damaged in the process. In some cases civilians, including children, were killed or buried alive under rubble of the demolished house. In the cases researched by Amnesty International, no warnings were apparently given for the safe evacuation of civilians before houses were demolished.
Death of children as a result of denial of access to medical care
Palestinian women in labour have been held up at checkpoints, and delayed or even prevented from passing through to reach hospital; in several cases such delays have resulted in loss of life for the babies and their mothers.
Children killed by Israeli settlers
Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have continued during the intifada. In most cases the IDF does not intervene sufficiently promptly or vigorously - if at all - to protect Palestinians from settler violence.
PRINCIPLES PROHIBITING THE TARGETING OF CHILDREN AND OTHER CIVILIANS
A fundamental principle of international humanitarian law is that parties involved in a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians (and therefore children) and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. It is not permitted to target civilians, that is people who are not members of the armed forces of either side. This principle, known as the principle of distinction, is a fundamental rule of customary international humanitarian law, binding on all parties to armed conflicts, whether international or non-international.(19)
Amnesty International condemns unreservedly all attacks on children, as on all civilians, whatever the cause for which the perpetrators are fighting, whatever justification they may give for their actions. Targeting civilians of whatever age and being reckless as to their fate is contrary to fundamental principles of humanity which should apply in all circumstances at all times.
Israels obligations as an occupying power
The rules of an occupying power are laid down in the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949, to which Israel is a High Contracting Party. Palestinian children, like all residents of the Occupied Territories, benefit from the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are ''protected persons''.(20)
Even though Israel has in the past rejected the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the Occupied Territories (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip), according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN, and the international community in general, the Fourth Geneva Convention fully applies to the Occupied Territories and the Palestinians are a protected population under the terms of the Convention.
Israel has equal obligations to protect human rights, including the right to life, under the terms of major UN human rights treaties which it has ratified and which it is obliged to uphold. These include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
Other human rights standards binding on members of the UN that are particularly relevant for the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinian children in this context are the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (Code of Conduct) and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials (Basic Principles).
Many killings of Palestinian children have been the result of excessive and totally disproportionate use of force by the IDF. Article 2 of the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials states that:
"In the performance of their duty, law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons. Law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty."
Article 3 of the Code of Conduct clarifies that the use of firearms is considered as an extreme measure and states specifically that every effort should be made to exclude the use of firearms, especially against children.
Israeli regulations on the use of firearms before the current intifada began in 2000 allowed the use of non-lethal firearms to disperse demonstrations or to arrest suspects. Prior to the intifada Israeli soldiers responded to Palestinian children who demonstrated and often threw stones by frequently shooting at them with rubber-coated metal bullets. These bullets are lethal, especially at short range; they consist of a heavy metal core coated with a thin layer of hard rubber or plastic and have considerable penetrative power.
According to the IDF's own regulations, they are not intended to be used at close range, should only be fired at the lower extremities, and it is explicitly prohibited to use them against children. However, the IDF has regularly used such bullets against child demonstrators at distances considerably closer than the minimum permitted range of 40 metres and the pattern of injury indicates that IDF practice has not been to aim at the legs of demonstrators, as the majority of injuries suffered by children from rubber-coated bullets are to the upper body and head .
It is not clear what the current regulations on the use of firearms are, as the Israeli authorities have refused to disclose them since shortly after the beginning of the intifada.(21) The pattern of injury sustained by Palestinian children and others shows that immediately from the first days of the intifada the IDF used live ammunition as well as rubber-coated metal bullets, and that they sharply increased the use of live ammunition very quickly. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) also charted a steady rise in injuries from live fire since 1 October 2000, three days after the start of the Palestinian uprising, and a parallel decline in the use of rubber-coated bullets.
It is not clear what instructions, if any, have been given to IDF soldiers about the targeting of children. However, the large number of children killed and injured by the IDF throughout the Occupied Territories in the past two years and the fact that most children killed or injured were hit in the head or upper body shows that in their use of firearms against Palestinian children, the IDF have consistently breached international standards regulating the use of force and firearms. (22)
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/MDE020052002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
KILLINGS OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN
The alarming pattern of killing of Palestinian children by the IDF was established at the outset of the intifada and has continued. On the second day of the intifada, on 30 September 2000, four children were killed by IDF fire.(6) The following day another four children aged between 12 and 17 were again killed by other security services. Within a month some 30 Palestinian children had been killed by IDF fire and by the end of the year 2000 the number was over 80.(7)
The rate at which Palestinian children were being killed decreased slightly during 2001 but increased again in 2002. In the first seven months of 2002 alone, more than 100 children were killed by IDF fire and the age of the victims was significantly lower than in the previous two years: in 2002, some 48% of the children killed were 12 years old or younger, as compared with some 35% in 2001 and about 13% in 2000.
In the first months of the intifada, the majority of child victims were killed as a result of the unlawful and excessive use of lethal force in response to demonstrations and stone-throwing incidents, when the lives of IDF soldiers were not at risk. In 2002 the majority were those children killed when the IDF randomly opened fire, or shelled or bombarded residential neighbourhoods in Palestinian towns and villages. Most of these children were killed when there was no exchange of fire and in circumstances in which the lives of the soldiers were not at risk.
During the first months of the intifada children were mostly killed during stone-throwing demonstrations, though in many cases they appear to have been bystanders during these demonstrations.
Children killed by flechettes and booby-traps
Several children have been killed by flechette shells or explosive devices used by the IDF in densely populated areas. Flechette shells are 120mm shells filled with up to 5,000 potentially lethal five-centimetre long steel darts or flechettes. Although not illegal per se under international law, such weapons should never be used in populated areas. In a visit to Khan Yunis in September 2001, Amnesty International delegates saw flechettes embedded in the wall of a house where 14 people lived, most of them children.
On 22 November 2001 five boys from the Istal family were killed by a booby trap device as they walked to school in Khan Yunis: six-year-old Akram Abd al-Karim al-Istal; Muhammad Na'im Abd al-Karim al-Istal, age 14; Umar Idris al-Istal, age 13; Anis Idris al-Istal, 11; and Muhammad Salman al-Istal, also 11. Amnesty International delegates visited the site on 1 February 2002. The IDF at first denied responsibility for the explosion but subsequently admitted having placed the device there in the hope that it might detonate against armed Palestinians who sometimes shot during the night from the area. Such a device should never have been placed in such a public location, or at least should have been immediately defused before morning, as this is an area where many people passed, especially children on their way to school.
Children killed as a result of the demolition of houses
In Jenin, Nablus and other places the IDF bulldozed a number of houses while residents, including children, were still inside. On other occasions the IDF used explosives to blow up houses without evacuating the surrounding houses, which were also destroyed or damaged in the process. In some cases civilians, including children, were killed or buried alive under rubble of the demolished house. In the cases researched by Amnesty International, no warnings were apparently given for the safe evacuation of civilians before houses were demolished.
Death of children as a result of denial of access to medical care
Palestinian women in labour have been held up at checkpoints, and delayed or even prevented from passing through to reach hospital; in several cases such delays have resulted in loss of life for the babies and their mothers.
Children killed by Israeli settlers
Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have continued during the intifada. In most cases the IDF does not intervene sufficiently promptly or vigorously - if at all - to protect Palestinians from settler violence.
PRINCIPLES PROHIBITING THE TARGETING OF CHILDREN AND OTHER CIVILIANS
A fundamental principle of international humanitarian law is that parties involved in a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians (and therefore children) and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. It is not permitted to target civilians, that is people who are not members of the armed forces of either side. This principle, known as the principle of distinction, is a fundamental rule of customary international humanitarian law, binding on all parties to armed conflicts, whether international or non-international.(19)
Amnesty International condemns unreservedly all attacks on children, as on all civilians, whatever the cause for which the perpetrators are fighting, whatever justification they may give for their actions. Targeting civilians of whatever age and being reckless as to their fate is contrary to fundamental principles of humanity which should apply in all circumstances at all times.
Israels obligations as an occupying power
The rules of an occupying power are laid down in the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949, to which Israel is a High Contracting Party. Palestinian children, like all residents of the Occupied Territories, benefit from the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are ''protected persons''.(20)
Even though Israel has in the past rejected the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the Occupied Territories (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip), according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN, and the international community in general, the Fourth Geneva Convention fully applies to the Occupied Territories and the Palestinians are a protected population under the terms of the Convention.
Israel has equal obligations to protect human rights, including the right to life, under the terms of major UN human rights treaties which it has ratified and which it is obliged to uphold. These include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
Other human rights standards binding on members of the UN that are particularly relevant for the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinian children in this context are the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (Code of Conduct) and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials (Basic Principles).
Many killings of Palestinian children have been the result of excessive and totally disproportionate use of force by the IDF. Article 2 of the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials states that:
"In the performance of their duty, law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons. Law enforcement officials may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty."
Article 3 of the Code of Conduct clarifies that the use of firearms is considered as an extreme measure and states specifically that every effort should be made to exclude the use of firearms, especially against children.
Israeli regulations on the use of firearms before the current intifada began in 2000 allowed the use of non-lethal firearms to disperse demonstrations or to arrest suspects. Prior to the intifada Israeli soldiers responded to Palestinian children who demonstrated and often threw stones by frequently shooting at them with rubber-coated metal bullets. These bullets are lethal, especially at short range; they consist of a heavy metal core coated with a thin layer of hard rubber or plastic and have considerable penetrative power.
According to the IDF's own regulations, they are not intended to be used at close range, should only be fired at the lower extremities, and it is explicitly prohibited to use them against children. However, the IDF has regularly used such bullets against child demonstrators at distances considerably closer than the minimum permitted range of 40 metres and the pattern of injury indicates that IDF practice has not been to aim at the legs of demonstrators, as the majority of injuries suffered by children from rubber-coated bullets are to the upper body and head .
It is not clear what the current regulations on the use of firearms are, as the Israeli authorities have refused to disclose them since shortly after the beginning of the intifada.(21) The pattern of injury sustained by Palestinian children and others shows that immediately from the first days of the intifada the IDF used live ammunition as well as rubber-coated metal bullets, and that they sharply increased the use of live ammunition very quickly. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) also charted a steady rise in injuries from live fire since 1 October 2000, three days after the start of the Palestinian uprising, and a parallel decline in the use of rubber-coated bullets.
It is not clear what instructions, if any, have been given to IDF soldiers about the targeting of children. However, the large number of children killed and injured by the IDF throughout the Occupied Territories in the past two years and the fact that most children killed or injured were hit in the head or upper body shows that in their use of firearms against Palestinian children, the IDF have consistently breached international standards regulating the use of force and firearms. (22)
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/MDE020052002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
E-Mail Slips to the Bottom of City Hall's In Box
MOST mayors and city council members routinely receive e-mail from constituents. While they say the messages help them to understand public opinion better, they still give more weight to opinions expressed in meetings, letters and telephone calls, according to a study released yesterday by the National League of Cities and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Of 520 municipal officials surveyed nationwide, 90 percent said they used the Internet on the job, and nearly 80 percent said they had received e-mail from constituents or local groups about civic issues. About 25 percent reported that they heard from constituents by e-mail every day.
However, about half of the Internet-using officials surveyed said that opinions expressed through meetings and phone calls carried the most weight. More than a quarter said that letters carried the most weight. By contrast, only 14 percent said they gave serious weight to opinions expressed by e-mail.
"The communications that take more time and energy are the ones that are going to carry the most weight," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project.
Mr. Genser, the councilman in Santa Monica, said: "I think the most effective thing is to come to the council meeting and speak. It shows more commitment."
E-mail, he said, rates more as a signature on a petition, especially if messages arrive as part of a lobbying campaign. The key for constituents, he said, is to produce a thoughtful message regardless of the delivery system.
Another study has also cast doubt on the effectiveness of e-mail for getting a message through to government. Results of a survey by researchers at Brown University, released two weeks ago, showed a poor response rate to e-mail by state government officials.
Researchers for the university's Taubman Center for Public Policy sent messages to human services departments in all 50 states. Only 55 percent of the e-mail messages were answered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/technology/circuits/03STUD.html
MOST mayors and city council members routinely receive e-mail from constituents. While they say the messages help them to understand public opinion better, they still give more weight to opinions expressed in meetings, letters and telephone calls, according to a study released yesterday by the National League of Cities and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Of 520 municipal officials surveyed nationwide, 90 percent said they used the Internet on the job, and nearly 80 percent said they had received e-mail from constituents or local groups about civic issues. About 25 percent reported that they heard from constituents by e-mail every day.
However, about half of the Internet-using officials surveyed said that opinions expressed through meetings and phone calls carried the most weight. More than a quarter said that letters carried the most weight. By contrast, only 14 percent said they gave serious weight to opinions expressed by e-mail.
"The communications that take more time and energy are the ones that are going to carry the most weight," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project.
Mr. Genser, the councilman in Santa Monica, said: "I think the most effective thing is to come to the council meeting and speak. It shows more commitment."
E-mail, he said, rates more as a signature on a petition, especially if messages arrive as part of a lobbying campaign. The key for constituents, he said, is to produce a thoughtful message regardless of the delivery system.
Another study has also cast doubt on the effectiveness of e-mail for getting a message through to government. Results of a survey by researchers at Brown University, released two weeks ago, showed a poor response rate to e-mail by state government officials.
Researchers for the university's Taubman Center for Public Policy sent messages to human services departments in all 50 states. Only 55 percent of the e-mail messages were answered.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/03/technology/circuits/03STUD.html
Music Industry Targets Net Swappers
Music companies tried to persuade a judge Friday to let them obtain the names of people suspected of trading music files online without going to court first, a move that could dictate how copyright holders deal with Internet piracy in the future.
Internet service provider Verizon is resisting the music industry's subpoena, saying that it could turn Internet providers into a turnstile for piracy suits and put innocent customers at risk.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, who heard the case, lamented ambiguities in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was enacted to uphold copyright laws on the Internet while shielding technology companies from direct liability.
Congress ``could have made this statute clearer,'' Bates said. ``This statute is not organized as being consistent with the argument for either side.''
Bates said he would try to rule quickly, but lawyers for both sides had no guess of when a decision might arrive.
The subpoena hearing, which is normally a tame affair, was contentious because the music industry sees it as a test case. If it succeeds, it plans to send reams of cease-and-desist letters to scare file-swappers into taking their collections offline.
Until now, copyright holders have relied on requests sent to Internet providers to take action on their own against suspected pirates. Almost all Internet providers forbid sharing copyrighted material without permission.
Verizon said that since the hundreds of songs up for trade by the anonymous Verizon customer at the center of the case sit on the person's computer rather than Verizon's network, it is not required to automatically give up the subscriber's name.
``Verizon was a passive conduit at most,'' said Eric Holder, a former Justice Department prosecutor who represented Verizon. Holder said the music industry's strategy could create a contentious relationship between Verizon and its customers and put the Internet provider in the position of handing over names to the music companies without a judicial determination of piracy.
``We also don't want to be the policeman in this process,'' Holder said.
Lawyers for the recording industry rejected Verizon's arguments that it had little obligations in the process. Industry lawyer Donald Verrilli said no type of service provider is exempt from having to identify a potential music pirate, no matter where the songs sit.
Verrilli also dismissed Verizon's position that the Internet provider's customers have a right to privacy.
``You don't have a first amendment right to steal copyright works,'' Verrilli said.
The judge disagreed with Verrilli's assumption that the works were stolen.
``Here, there's only an allegation of infringement,'' Bates said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Swapping.html
Music companies tried to persuade a judge Friday to let them obtain the names of people suspected of trading music files online without going to court first, a move that could dictate how copyright holders deal with Internet piracy in the future.
Internet service provider Verizon is resisting the music industry's subpoena, saying that it could turn Internet providers into a turnstile for piracy suits and put innocent customers at risk.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, who heard the case, lamented ambiguities in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was enacted to uphold copyright laws on the Internet while shielding technology companies from direct liability.
Congress ``could have made this statute clearer,'' Bates said. ``This statute is not organized as being consistent with the argument for either side.''
Bates said he would try to rule quickly, but lawyers for both sides had no guess of when a decision might arrive.
The subpoena hearing, which is normally a tame affair, was contentious because the music industry sees it as a test case. If it succeeds, it plans to send reams of cease-and-desist letters to scare file-swappers into taking their collections offline.
Until now, copyright holders have relied on requests sent to Internet providers to take action on their own against suspected pirates. Almost all Internet providers forbid sharing copyrighted material without permission.
Verizon said that since the hundreds of songs up for trade by the anonymous Verizon customer at the center of the case sit on the person's computer rather than Verizon's network, it is not required to automatically give up the subscriber's name.
``Verizon was a passive conduit at most,'' said Eric Holder, a former Justice Department prosecutor who represented Verizon. Holder said the music industry's strategy could create a contentious relationship between Verizon and its customers and put the Internet provider in the position of handing over names to the music companies without a judicial determination of piracy.
``We also don't want to be the policeman in this process,'' Holder said.
Lawyers for the recording industry rejected Verizon's arguments that it had little obligations in the process. Industry lawyer Donald Verrilli said no type of service provider is exempt from having to identify a potential music pirate, no matter where the songs sit.
Verrilli also dismissed Verizon's position that the Internet provider's customers have a right to privacy.
``You don't have a first amendment right to steal copyright works,'' Verrilli said.
The judge disagreed with Verrilli's assumption that the works were stolen.
``Here, there's only an allegation of infringement,'' Bates said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Swapping.html
What Bush Can Learn From Truman
Truman was a Woodrow Wilson internationalist — one who believed strongly in the efficacy of international law and organization. His instinct was to look for allies and international legitimacy in responding to security threats while mobilizing American resolve and resources. He built and strengthened multilateral institutions, forged broad alliances to confront the Soviet Union, and turned immediately to the United Nations when North Korea launched its attack in 1950.
Truman's policy of deterrence and containment was conservative at its core. It rejected the risks of a larger, potentially devastating war associated with "rolling back" Soviet gains in Eastern Europe. He was prepared to rein in an offensive-minded military to keep intact his strategic defensive policy by firing the very popular General Douglas MacArthur.
Facing strong Republican opposition in Congress, one that resisted much of his domestic agenda, Truman saw the wisdom of working hard to fashion bipartisanship on foreign policy. He championed a strong presidency but he respected the constitutional authority of Congress. His consultations with Congress on national security matters were early, continuous and substantive. In fact, he indicated to Congress that he would welcome Congressional authorization of military action in Korea but Congressional leaders demurred.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/opinion/06MANN.html
Truman was a Woodrow Wilson internationalist — one who believed strongly in the efficacy of international law and organization. His instinct was to look for allies and international legitimacy in responding to security threats while mobilizing American resolve and resources. He built and strengthened multilateral institutions, forged broad alliances to confront the Soviet Union, and turned immediately to the United Nations when North Korea launched its attack in 1950.
Truman's policy of deterrence and containment was conservative at its core. It rejected the risks of a larger, potentially devastating war associated with "rolling back" Soviet gains in Eastern Europe. He was prepared to rein in an offensive-minded military to keep intact his strategic defensive policy by firing the very popular General Douglas MacArthur.
Facing strong Republican opposition in Congress, one that resisted much of his domestic agenda, Truman saw the wisdom of working hard to fashion bipartisanship on foreign policy. He championed a strong presidency but he respected the constitutional authority of Congress. His consultations with Congress on national security matters were early, continuous and substantive. In fact, he indicated to Congress that he would welcome Congressional authorization of military action in Korea but Congressional leaders demurred.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/opinion/06MANN.html
The Difficult Balance Between Liberty and Security
Even more than last year, the Supreme Court's new term begins in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks led Congress to pass laws that increase the ability of federal officials to investigate not just terrorists but all Americans. While the Supreme Court may begin to hear challenges to those laws later in its term, which begins tomorrow, it already has on its docket several cases that could reveal how it draws the line between liberty and security.
In hearing these cases, the justices will inevitably face one of the most basic and profound questions for any system of justice: how to ensure that the most serious restrictions on liberty are reserved for those who pose the most serious threats to security. Few Americans would disagree with the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. But whether the Constitution requires some degree of proportionality is unclear. Unfortunately, based on the justices' past rulings, it may be a mistake to rely on the Supreme Court to restore some sense of balance.
Of the cases the court has already agreed to hear, three involve laws passed after highly publicized crimes in the 1990's: the Oklahoma City bombing and the murders of Polly Klass and Megan Kanka. Like the Sept. 11 attacks, these crimes created widespread fear and unrealistic public demands for security at the expense of liberty. Although the justices have been eager to expand their own power in relation to that of Congress and the president, they have been reluctant to strike down or modify excessively broad laws adopted in haste after especially dramatic or horrific events.
In Demore v. Kim, the issue is whether Congress, in responding to terrorism after the Oklahoma City bombing, acted unconstitutionally when it passed a law in 1996 requiring the attorney general to take into custody all noncitizens who commit certain crimes and hold them without bail before deporting them. The law is being challenged by a South Korean citizen who served three years in prison for petty theft and was seized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service the day after his release. In striking down the mandatory detention, a federal appeals court said the plaintiff's treatment was disproportionate to his crime.
How the Supreme Court decides this case may give some indication of its view of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which Congress passed a year ago and which gives the attorney general even broader powers to detain criminal aliens. Two years ago, the Supreme Court narrowly held that the indefinite detention of certain aliens might violate the Constitution, although it made an exception for cases involving terrorism (which it did not define). Yet the court has traditionally given Congress broad discretion over immigration and historically has not insisted upon proportionality between the length of the detention and the seriousness of the crime in cases involving noncitizens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/opinion/06ROSE.html
Even more than last year, the Supreme Court's new term begins in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks led Congress to pass laws that increase the ability of federal officials to investigate not just terrorists but all Americans. While the Supreme Court may begin to hear challenges to those laws later in its term, which begins tomorrow, it already has on its docket several cases that could reveal how it draws the line between liberty and security.
In hearing these cases, the justices will inevitably face one of the most basic and profound questions for any system of justice: how to ensure that the most serious restrictions on liberty are reserved for those who pose the most serious threats to security. Few Americans would disagree with the principle that the punishment should fit the crime. But whether the Constitution requires some degree of proportionality is unclear. Unfortunately, based on the justices' past rulings, it may be a mistake to rely on the Supreme Court to restore some sense of balance.
Of the cases the court has already agreed to hear, three involve laws passed after highly publicized crimes in the 1990's: the Oklahoma City bombing and the murders of Polly Klass and Megan Kanka. Like the Sept. 11 attacks, these crimes created widespread fear and unrealistic public demands for security at the expense of liberty. Although the justices have been eager to expand their own power in relation to that of Congress and the president, they have been reluctant to strike down or modify excessively broad laws adopted in haste after especially dramatic or horrific events.
In Demore v. Kim, the issue is whether Congress, in responding to terrorism after the Oklahoma City bombing, acted unconstitutionally when it passed a law in 1996 requiring the attorney general to take into custody all noncitizens who commit certain crimes and hold them without bail before deporting them. The law is being challenged by a South Korean citizen who served three years in prison for petty theft and was seized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service the day after his release. In striking down the mandatory detention, a federal appeals court said the plaintiff's treatment was disproportionate to his crime.
How the Supreme Court decides this case may give some indication of its view of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, which Congress passed a year ago and which gives the attorney general even broader powers to detain criminal aliens. Two years ago, the Supreme Court narrowly held that the indefinite detention of certain aliens might violate the Constitution, although it made an exception for cases involving terrorism (which it did not define). Yet the court has traditionally given Congress broad discretion over immigration and historically has not insisted upon proportionality between the length of the detention and the seriousness of the crime in cases involving noncitizens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/opinion/06ROSE.html
EU's Solana Meets Israeli, Palestinian Officials
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana had talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials Sunday, kicking off a fresh round of international diplomacy aimed at stanching two years of bloodshed.
His meetings came against the backdrop of fresh violence in which two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank.
Palestinian witnesses said Jewish settlers shot and killed a Palestinian worker as he was harvesting olives with several other people in a grove south of Nablus. An Israeli police spokesman said the incident was under investigation.
Israeli forces shot and killed a second Palestinian during a battle with gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp, witnesses and medical officials said. A military source said soldiers shot at gunmen who fired on one of their units.
Solana said before arriving in the region Saturday that he would emphasize the need for Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks stalled since 2000 and push forward a new plan from the ``quartet'' of U.N., U.S., Russian and EU mediators.
In September, the quartet outlined a peace plan demanding that Palestinians reform their governing authority and Israel withdraw troops from West Bank cities, aiming at a final peace settlement in three years.
U.S. Middle East envoy William Burns was also due to visit within days amid fresh tension with Palestinians over a new U.S. law requiring the administration to stipulate on documents that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Solana met Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres Sunday and was due to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Monday.
Ben-Eliezer told Solana he wanted the EU to pressure Palestinians to prevent militants from attacking Israelis in their two-year-old uprising against occupation, army radio said.
Arafat's security adviser Mohammad Dahlan told reporters after talks with Solana in Gaza that the EU official and Arafat would ``review the steps Israel has taken to destroy peace efforts and the ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people.''
Arafat signed a law Saturday declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of a future independent Palestinian state, facing off against the new U.S. bill signed into law by President Bush last week.
The White House has since stressed the law does not change its policy that the future of Jerusalem, claimed by both sides as a capital, should be determined in peace negotiations.
The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Sunday discussed the U.S. law, which Palestinians and other Arabs denounce as backing Israel's claims to the city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians.
``This step shows that the U.S. administration is turning its back on the peace process that it sponsors and on the bilateral agreements between Israel and the Palestinians,'' PLC speaker Ahmed Korei said.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana had talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials Sunday, kicking off a fresh round of international diplomacy aimed at stanching two years of bloodshed.
His meetings came against the backdrop of fresh violence in which two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank.
Palestinian witnesses said Jewish settlers shot and killed a Palestinian worker as he was harvesting olives with several other people in a grove south of Nablus. An Israeli police spokesman said the incident was under investigation.
Israeli forces shot and killed a second Palestinian during a battle with gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp, witnesses and medical officials said. A military source said soldiers shot at gunmen who fired on one of their units.
Solana said before arriving in the region Saturday that he would emphasize the need for Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks stalled since 2000 and push forward a new plan from the ``quartet'' of U.N., U.S., Russian and EU mediators.
In September, the quartet outlined a peace plan demanding that Palestinians reform their governing authority and Israel withdraw troops from West Bank cities, aiming at a final peace settlement in three years.
U.S. Middle East envoy William Burns was also due to visit within days amid fresh tension with Palestinians over a new U.S. law requiring the administration to stipulate on documents that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Solana met Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres Sunday and was due to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Monday.
Ben-Eliezer told Solana he wanted the EU to pressure Palestinians to prevent militants from attacking Israelis in their two-year-old uprising against occupation, army radio said.
Arafat's security adviser Mohammad Dahlan told reporters after talks with Solana in Gaza that the EU official and Arafat would ``review the steps Israel has taken to destroy peace efforts and the ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people.''
Arafat signed a law Saturday declaring Jerusalem to be the capital of a future independent Palestinian state, facing off against the new U.S. bill signed into law by President Bush last week.
The White House has since stressed the law does not change its policy that the future of Jerusalem, claimed by both sides as a capital, should be determined in peace negotiations.
The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Sunday discussed the U.S. law, which Palestinians and other Arabs denounce as backing Israel's claims to the city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians.
``This step shows that the U.S. administration is turning its back on the peace process that it sponsors and on the bilateral agreements between Israel and the Palestinians,'' PLC speaker Ahmed Korei said.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
Riddle in Seattle: Is Man Held by U.S. a Terrorist or Just a Hustler?
By the time James Ujaama returned here three months ago, he knew that federal agents had been following him for months and that his past would soon be interpreted in a way that would shock people here in his hometown, his friends said.
In many ways, Mr. Ujaama was a changed man after five years in London. A convert to Islam, he spoke passionately of wanting to work against laws loosening restrictions on wiretapping terrorism suspects.
But in other ways, he was the same person, known in Seattle's Central District for trying to sell everything from motivational books to a screenplay about his life.
"At the end of our meeting, he sold me a shirt," said Larry Gossett, a member of the King County Council. "That's the James Ujaama I know. He was always a good hustler."
In court this week, federal prosecutors painted another picture. Mr. Ujaama, they said, had attended training camps of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; had tried to help set up a terrorist camp in the United States; and had taken a loyalty oath to a London cleric, Sheik Abu Hamza al-Masri, described by prosecutors as "perhaps one of the best-known terrorists in the world."
After weighing testimonials about Mr. Ujaama's good character against the image of him as someone in league with terrorists, a federal magistrate judge, John Weinberg, appeared as perplexed as anyone about Mr. Ujaama.
"His background is exemplary," Judge Weinberg said on Tuesday. "But people change. And the record suggests some drastic and tragic changes for Mr. Ujaama." He ordered Mr. Ujaama held without bail.
The riddle of James Ujaama, who is well known among this city's African-Americans, may not be solved for some time. Although he was indicted in late August on a charge of conspiring to help Al Qaeda establish a terrorist training camp on a ranch in southern Oregon, his trial could be more than a year away, his lawyers say.
Some prominent blacks in Seattle support Mr. Ujaama, saying he appears to be the victim of the persecution that black leaders endured in the past.
"I can't see anything in his past that would indicate he would ever be involved with violent terrorists," said Eddie Rye Jr., regional vice president of the Black Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Rye has known Mr. Ujaama for more than 20 years. Like other longtime acquaintances, Mr. Rye suggests the activities that the government says are part of a plot can by explained by Mr. Ujaama's lifetime of making deals.
"James Ujaama first and foremost is an entrepreneur," Mr. Rye said. "He had prepared himself since an early age for success."
As a child, Mr. Ujaama worked at food banks and social service centers in Seattle, helping his mother, Peggy Thompson. As a young man, he established a computer business, sold pamphlets encouraging young blacks to stay off drugs and succeed through the American dream, and was a motivational speaker.
A state legislator, Jesse Wineberry, once issued a citation declaring a statewide day of recognition for Mr. Ujaama.
But Mr. Ujaama also has a criminal record, which his supporters have played down. It includes a felony conviction for check fraud and four convictions for misdemeanors, including theft and domestic violence, the federal authorities say.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/national/06CAMP.html
By the time James Ujaama returned here three months ago, he knew that federal agents had been following him for months and that his past would soon be interpreted in a way that would shock people here in his hometown, his friends said.
In many ways, Mr. Ujaama was a changed man after five years in London. A convert to Islam, he spoke passionately of wanting to work against laws loosening restrictions on wiretapping terrorism suspects.
But in other ways, he was the same person, known in Seattle's Central District for trying to sell everything from motivational books to a screenplay about his life.
"At the end of our meeting, he sold me a shirt," said Larry Gossett, a member of the King County Council. "That's the James Ujaama I know. He was always a good hustler."
In court this week, federal prosecutors painted another picture. Mr. Ujaama, they said, had attended training camps of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; had tried to help set up a terrorist camp in the United States; and had taken a loyalty oath to a London cleric, Sheik Abu Hamza al-Masri, described by prosecutors as "perhaps one of the best-known terrorists in the world."
After weighing testimonials about Mr. Ujaama's good character against the image of him as someone in league with terrorists, a federal magistrate judge, John Weinberg, appeared as perplexed as anyone about Mr. Ujaama.
"His background is exemplary," Judge Weinberg said on Tuesday. "But people change. And the record suggests some drastic and tragic changes for Mr. Ujaama." He ordered Mr. Ujaama held without bail.
The riddle of James Ujaama, who is well known among this city's African-Americans, may not be solved for some time. Although he was indicted in late August on a charge of conspiring to help Al Qaeda establish a terrorist training camp on a ranch in southern Oregon, his trial could be more than a year away, his lawyers say.
Some prominent blacks in Seattle support Mr. Ujaama, saying he appears to be the victim of the persecution that black leaders endured in the past.
"I can't see anything in his past that would indicate he would ever be involved with violent terrorists," said Eddie Rye Jr., regional vice president of the Black Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Rye has known Mr. Ujaama for more than 20 years. Like other longtime acquaintances, Mr. Rye suggests the activities that the government says are part of a plot can by explained by Mr. Ujaama's lifetime of making deals.
"James Ujaama first and foremost is an entrepreneur," Mr. Rye said. "He had prepared himself since an early age for success."
As a child, Mr. Ujaama worked at food banks and social service centers in Seattle, helping his mother, Peggy Thompson. As a young man, he established a computer business, sold pamphlets encouraging young blacks to stay off drugs and succeed through the American dream, and was a motivational speaker.
A state legislator, Jesse Wineberry, once issued a citation declaring a statewide day of recognition for Mr. Ujaama.
But Mr. Ujaama also has a criminal record, which his supporters have played down. It includes a felony conviction for check fraud and four convictions for misdemeanors, including theft and domestic violence, the federal authorities say.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/06/national/06CAMP.html
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