Israel defiant as Palestinians set fire to themselves: Reports of “massacre”

Israel launches its most violent attack against the Palestinians, in open defiance of President Bush’s orders to withdraw from the territories occupied recently. Palestinian demonstrators douse themselves with petrol in front of the Israeli soldiers. Palestinian spokespersons warn that Israel is about to perpetrate a massacre in Jenin.

So desperate in the plight of the Palestinians that a number of them have set themselves alight as human torches before the invading troops’ eyes. Palestine Authority officials have issued a request for urgent international aid, warning that Israel is about to carry out a massacre in the refugee camp of Jenin.

The Israeli Armed Forces continue their bloodthirsty and cowardly quest for the extermination of the Palestinians. Today (Saturday) in Hebron, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead, hit full in the chest by an Israeli soldier firing from an armed column. It is reported that the boys had been throwing stones, an attack which was answered with automatic gunfire.

As this article goes to press, Pravda.Ru sources in the West Bank report that US-built Apache helicopters are “firing at everything that moves, men, women and children”.

The radical Palestinian group Hammas has promised “an unprecedented response” to this spiralling wave of violence. A comminique published today by the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, reads: “This time, the punishment will be of a new kind, of an uncommon nature, it will shake their identity and destroy their pillars”.

Salim Al-Zaanoun, President of the Palestinian National Council, has issued a formal request for Arab countries to cut diplomatic, economic and cultural ties with Israel.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru