"The IDF (the Israeli occupation army) was not involved," an army spokeswoman told AFP. "The IDF had no connection to the incident."

Meanwhile, an Israeli working at a service station near a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank was fatally wounded in a drive-by Palestinian shooting.

Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades armed wing claimed the attack.

A spokesman for the faction said in a phone call to AFP that the attack was carried out to avenge an Israeli army operation in Nablus last week when three Al-Aqsa members were killed.

The latest death brought to 4,970 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000. Over three-quarters of the victims are Palestinian.

The violence prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday, February 24, to call for a special UN Security Council session to rein in Israel after its acting premier vowed to press on with a campaign of attacks against resistance groups.

Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Beth internal security service and a leading member of Acting premier Ehud Olmert's Kadima party, said incoming Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya would not be granted any kind of immunity by his new position.

MPs Arrested

Abbas called for a UNSC meeting to rein in Israel's aggressions.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops arrested Wednesday two newly elected Members of Parliament for the resistance movement Hamas, which has joined mainstream politics after its landslide parliamentary election victory in January.

Police spokesman Shmuel Ben Rubi said Mohammad Abu Teir and Mohammed Totah were detained while touring Al-Maqassid hospital on the Mount of Olives in Al-Quds.

"They are not allowed to do any political activities in [occupied] Jerusalem," he said.

A Hamas source said Abu Teir and Totah were arrested as they toured the Maqassid hospital as part of an inspection of institutions in Al-Quds.

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied and annexed Al-Quds, which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their promised, future state.

In a bid to stiffen the pressure against Hamas, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni embarked this week on her first trip to Europe where she was due to meet with her counterparts from Britain, France and Austria.

During an interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper, Livni reiterated threats to cut all contact with the Palestinian Authority since Hamas is set to form a new government in a matter of weeks.

Earlier in the week, Livni said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas became "irrelevant" and Israel would not allow Abbas to be "a fig leaf for Hamas."

Israel's decision to freeze the payment of customs duties it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in the wake of Hamas's rise to power has triggered warnings that the government could collapse entirely.

The PA is dependent on foreign aid and on tax revenues collected by Israel on its behalf to pay its 140,000 employees and keep its ministries and institutions functioning.

The European Union said Tuesday, February 28, it would release emergency aid to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority after earlier threats to cut off the aid if Hamas had not "renounced violence" and recognize Israel.

Hamas has rejected threats of a fund cut-off as blackmail and said it would seek assistance from Arabs and Muslims, both at the grassroots and government levels.

Another facet of this colonization is a regime of excessive restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of Palestinians between their enclosures and enclaves within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The pledged European donation, part of which is intended to pay salaries in the Palestinian public sector, shows that Europe is having a difficult time preventing Israel from robbing in broad daylight Palestinian tax and customs monies, amounting to between $50 million and $65 million a month. It also shows that Europe assesses that the U.S. will not pressure Israel to return the stolen funds - in contrast with the pressure it exerted at the beginning of the intifada, when Israel also blocked the transfer of tax monies.

Indeed, the funds are levied at Israeli ports and within Israel, but on Palestinian private sector transactions. This is Palestinian money, which by every standard of proper administration must not accrue interest in the Israeli treasury when it should be transferred to the Palestinian health or education ministries.

The money constitutes about two-thirds of the income that derives from Palestinian economic activity. One-third - about $35 million a month - are taxes directly levied on economic activity within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These sums could be much higher, and could help to balance out the donations and handouts to the Palestinian ongoing budget, were it not for the Israeli measures taken against the Palestinian economy and its potential for development.

These measures are not newly imposed on the occasion of Hamas' ascendance. No - Israel has destroyed and continues to destroy Palestinian agriculture, the two Palestinian national vegetable gardens - in the eastern and in the western sections of the West Bank - by means of the separation fence and de facto annexation of the Jordan Rift. Destruction of lands, prevention of access to cultivated lands and orchards, imposition of marketing impediments, harm to water sources - all of these have made destitute tens of thousands of proud farmers, and reduced their contribution to the national income.

Even before the current intifada, Israel hurt Palestinian industry's chances to develop, while channeling it into "industry regions" adjacent to Israel. Through its control over most of the West Bank territory (60 percent - all of the Area C - which Israel set aside for expansion of the Jewish settlements), control was achieved through imposition of maximal restrictions: on construction permits, Palestinian developments plans, transfer of factory buildings out of residential neighborhoods, and the upgrading of industrial facilities.

Another method was based on restriction of movement from one region to the other. These restrictions have existed since 1991, but have grown more harsh in the past five years. You don't need to be an economist to understand just how unworthwhile it is to manufacture, to employ, to market or to trade when it takes a truck loaded with raw materials or finished goods eight hours to reach its destination, instead of one hour.

Another method of impairing Palestinian development potential is cutting off access to institutions of higher learning. Israel does not permit Gazans to study in the West Bank, where the educational institutions are better, and does not permit East Jerusalem Palestinians to study in the West Bank. The checkpoints and the creation of fenced-off enclosures compel students from the West Bank to live near their university, even if it is only 20 kilometers from home. This is an additional financial burden that many families cannot bear. The thinning out of the universities' sources of income also affects their level.

There are no lack of economists who can prove the connection between Israeli methods of control and decline of the Palestinian economy. Abundant studies trace the direct line between the draconian restrictions on movement and the transformation of the majority of the Palestinian people into a nation of charity recipients, and it is a safe bet that the initiatives to continue giving them handouts of various sorts will go on unabated.

Therefore, the Palestinians should be worried and concerned, not happy, about Monday's announcement by the EU foreign ministers. It signals that the European states are going to continue forfeiting any opportunity to exert political pressure to put a stop to the Israeli policy of colonization, which has systematically sabotaged the economic capability of the Palestinians. By transferring the funds, they are covering up, and will continue to do so, for their political helplessness, and for their decision not to quarrel with the U.S., which supports this Israeli policy.

With the establishment of a Hamas-led government, other formulas will be found to continue providing the Palestinians a safety net of contributions and handouts. The government of Israel will cry foul and scream "Aid to Hamas!" but will quietly be pleased at the prospect.

The flights for cast and crew had been booked; the production schedule delivered; the press announcement drafted and approved; tickets advertised on the internet. The Royal Court production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, the play I co-edited with Alan Rickman, was transferring next month to the New York Theatre Workshop, home of the groundbreaking musical Rent, following two sellout runs in London and several awards.

We always thought that it was a piece of work that needed to be seen in the US. Created from the journals and emails of American activist Rachel Corrie, telling of her journey from her adolescent life in Seattle, Washington, to her death under a bulldozer in Gaza at the age of 23, we considered it, in a sense, to be an American story, which would have a particular relevance for audiences in Rachel's home country. After all, she had made her journey to the Middle East in order "to meet the people who are on the receiving end of our [American] tax dollars", and she was a killed by a US-made bulldozer.

But last week the New York Theatre Workshop cancelled the production - or, in their words, "postponed it indefinitely". The political climate, we were told, had changed dramatically since the play was booked. As James Nicola, the theatre's artistic director, said yesterday: "In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation." Rachel was to be censored for political reasons.

It makes you wonder. If a young, middle-class, scrupulously fair-minded, and dead, American woman, whose superb writing about her job as a mental health worker, ex-boyfriends, troublesome parents, struggle to find out who she wanted to be, and how she found that by travelling to Gaza and discovering the shocking conditions under which the Palestinians live - if a voice like this cannot be heard on a New York stage, what hope is there for anyone else? The non-American, the non-white, the non-dead, the oppressed?

Anyone who sees the play, or reads it, realises that this is no piece of alienating agitprop. One night in London, a group of American students came to a performance and mobbed us afterwards, thrilled that they had seen themselves on stage, and who they might, in a different life, have become. Another night, an Israeli couple, members of the rightwing Likud party, on holiday in Britain, were similarly impressed. "The play wasn't against Israel, it was against violence," they told Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother. I was particularly touched by a young Jewish New Yorker, from an Orthodox family, who said that he had been nervous about coming to see My Name Is Rachel Corrie, because he had been told that both she and it were viciously anti-Israel. But he had been powerfully moved by Rachel's words and realised that he had, to his alarm, been dangerously misled.

But the director of the New York theatre told the New York Times yesterday that it wasn't the people who actually saw the play he was concerned about. "I don't think we were worried about the audience," he said. "I think we were more worried that those who had never encountered her writing, never encountered the piece, would be using this as an opportunity to position their arguments." Since when did theatre come to be about those who don't go to see it? If the play itself, as Mr Nicola clearly concedes, is not the problem, then isn't the answer to get people in to watch it, rather than exercising prior censorship? With freedom of speech now at the top of the international agenda, and George Clooney's outstanding Good Night, and Good Luck reminding us of the dangers of not standing up to witch-hunts, Americans should not be denied the right to hear Rachel Corrie's words - words that only two weeks ago were deemed acceptable.

I'd heard from American friends that life for dissenters had been getting worse - wiretapping scandals, arrests for wearing anti-war T-shirts, Muslim professors denied visas. But it's hard to tell from afar how bad things really are. Here was personal proof that the political climate is continuing to shift disturbingly, narrowing the scope of free debate and artistic expression. What was acceptable a matter of weeks ago is not acceptable now. The New York theatre's claim that the arrangement was tentative is absurd: the truth is that its management has caved in to political pressure, and the reputation of the arts in New York is the poorer for it.

It is surely underestimating the curiosity and robustness of the American public, many of whom would no doubt be interested in an insight into the reality of occupation that led to the Hamas victory. Artistic communities need to resist the censorship of voices that go against the grain of George Bush's America, rather than following the Fox News agenda and gagging them before they have even been heard.

· My Name Is Rachel Corrie will now be shown at the Playhouse theatre in London's West End from March 28; booking number 0870 060 6631

k.viner@guardian.co.uk

The oil drilling plan, which has not been reported among Abramoff's many other schemes, casts new light on the scope of the disgraced lobbyist's dealings and the possible reach of the federal investigation into links between his clients, business partners, and members of Congress.

Documents reviewed by the Globe show that in November 2001 Abramoff sought a banker's letter vouching that his newly created company, First Gate Resources, could undertake a $5 million project. The letter was addressed to the then-Israeli oil commissioner.

A former Abramoff lobbying partner, Ronald Platt, said in an interview that he was shown a brochure about First Gate that listed the company officers as Abramoff and two Russian energy company executives of a Moscow firm called Naftasib.

''They supposedly had some kind of technology for determining oil and gas resources, they had discovered vast oil and gas deposits in the Israeli desert, and [Abramoff believed that] if these were exploited it would change the whole dynamic of the Middle East," Platt said.

Abramoff's venture never got off the ground, but the plan provides significant new insights into the lobbyist's ties to Naftasib and its two senior executives.

Federal agents are probing Abramoff's dealings with the Russians as part of the larger investigation into whether he bribed members of Congress into helping his clients and then reaped huge fees and cash for his personal businesses. Federal investigators have sought information about Naftasib's interest in congressional support for Russian projects financed through the International Monetary Fund.

Naftasib executives helped arrange a trip Abramoff took to Moscow in 1997 with former House majority leader Tom DeLay, a close Abramoff friend.

Investigators have been trying to connect the dots on Abramoff's various activities for more than a year. In January, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion in connection with his representation of Indian tribes, and agreed to cooperate with federal agents probing members of Congress.

His drilling company was set up in a way that shields the names of its officers. A company called First Gate Resources was set up under Delaware incorporation laws on Feb. 6, 2001, and dissolved in 2004, according to records.

E-mails released by a Senate committee probing Abramoff show that he counted on his Russian partners to write a letter to Israeli officials pledging financial support for his plan to drill for oil. The Russians, Alexander Koulakovsky and Marina Nevskaya, were top executives of the Moscow energy giant Naftasib and were connected to a company that paid $2.1 million in lobbying fees to Abramoff and his partners, according to former Abramoff associates.

Abramoff wrote an e-mail to a lobbying partner on Nov. 4, 2001, with the subject line of ''first gate," saying he needed the letter ''mega fast. This is something Alexander and Marina were supposed to get but have not done so. Our permit in Israel depends on it and we are running short of time."
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Abramoff then began looking for an alternative way to vouch for his financial standing.

In one e-mail, Abramoff described himself as ''the principal of First Gate" and told his lobbying partner to have a banker write a letter vouching for him, suggesting that the letter say ''that my companies are well regarded and have integrity, that I have a fine reputation in Washington, D.C., that they believe I have the means and financial backing to undertake a project/transaction in the $5 million range."

When Abramoff's colleague responded via e-mail that a bank might be hesitant to write such a letter for a company that has just been established, Abramoff responded that ''it's really, really important to me to be able to do this." The two then discussed by e-mail putting large sums of money into accounts at the bank to smooth the way for the letter to be written.

Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew who frequently expressed a desire to help Israel, then drafted a letter to be sent by a bank to Yehezkiel Druckman, who was Israel's oil commissioner at the time.
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The draft said that ''based on our experience with First Gate Resources Inc. we believe that the company has the means and the financial backing to undertake a project/transaction costing $5 million."

The e-mails do not make clear whether the letter was sent or what happened to Abramoff's dream of finding oil in Israel. Druckman, who is no longer the oil minister, could not be reached for comment.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington said it had no information on the Abramoff effort.

However, an Israeli oil specialist, Philip Mandelker, said that First Gate Resources did try to get a lease for petroleum.

''My understanding is that First Gate Resources had been in contact with the Israeli authorities in about 2001 about the possibility of acquiring petroleum exploration rights," said Mandelker, who works for Zion Oil and Gas, a Texas company with no connection to Abramoff that is looking for oil in Israel.

Mandelker, who has discussed the matter with Israeli officials, said First Gate never got the required permits.

Israel does have significant natural gas resources, but the country imports nearly all of its oil. A report by the US Department of Energy says that about 460 oil wells have been drilled in Israel since the 1940s ''with little success."

But the report quotes Israeli officials as saying that the country could have large oil reserves beneath natural gas fields.

Within weeks of the effort to establish the oil-drilling plan, Abramoff discussed with the same Russian partners a plan to purchase night-vision equipment for settlers in territory occupied by Israel, according to his e-mails.

One e-mail sent to Abramoff on Oct. 15, 2001, says that it will cost $28,000 to purchase the equipment, and is signed by a person identified as ''Vadim, assistant to Mrs. Nevskaya." It is from an e-mail account at ''naftasib.com," the company where Nevskaya worked.

Shortly thereafter, an Abramoff-related group, Capital Athletic Foundation, listed an $18,000 ''donation of thermal imager," suggesting the equipment was bought and sent to the settlers.

A Washington representative of Naftasib declined comment, and Nevskaya did not respond to an e-mail request for comment. An Abramoff spokesman also declined comment.

Yossi Zur, whose teenage son Asaf was killed in a bus bombing, accused the film of sympathetically portraying a tactic hailed by many Palestinians waging a 5-year-old uprising.

"What they call 'Paradise Now' we call 'hell now', each and every day," Zur told reporters. "It is a mission of the free world not to give such movies a prize."

Film industry experts said it was unheard of for an Oscar nomination to be withdrawn. This year's ceremony is on March 5.

Major Israeli cinema chains have shunned "Paradise Now," with distribution experts citing concern that its portrayal of suicide bombers could spell a low box-office turnout and even boycotts.

The film shows Palestinians bemoaning the travails of life under Israeli occupation, yet its characters also debate whether this warrants resorting to violence.

One of the protagonists takes on his deadly mission to exonerate guilt over a relative who spied for Israel, a comment on the complex pressures within Palestinian society.

Palestinians seeking independence in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel captured in a 1967 war, won limited self-rule under interim accords that formed the Palestinian Authority. Some Jews opposed ceding the land, seeing it as their biblical birthright.

Fighting that erupted in 2000 and last month's victory in Palestinian elections of the Islamic militant group Hamas have dimmed hopes for peaceful two-state co-existence.

C0-PRODUCTION

Despite its controversial subject, "Paradise Now" won a Golden Globe prize in January, boosting its Oscar prospects.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is already debating how to present the provenance of the film. The academy's Web site had listed it as coming from "Palestine," drawing Israeli complaints as the state does not yet exist.

The controversy around "Paradise Now" compounds an already fraught Academy Awards for Israel, thanks to several nominations garnered by Steven Spielberg's "Munich."

A thriller about the reprisals the Jewish state launched after 11 of its athletes died in a Palestinian raid on the 1972 Olympic Games, Munich has been accused by pro-Israel groups of skewing history and criticizing Israeli security policies.

Spielberg called the film his "prayer for peace."

Before you accuse me of failing to understand the sensitivities of victims of the Holocaust, or the nature of Austrian anti-Semitism, I should say that I am the son of Austrian Jews. My parents escaped Austria in time, but my grandparents did not.

All four of my grandparents were deported to ghettos in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Two of them were sent to Lodz, in Poland, and then probably murdered with carbon monoxide at the extermination camp at Chelmno. One fell ill and died in the overcrowded and underfed ghetto at Theresienstadt. My maternal grandmother was the only survivor.

So I have no sympathy for David Irving's absurd denial of the Holocaust - which he now claims was a mistake. I support efforts to prevent any return to Nazism in Austria or anywhere else. But how is the cause of truth served by prohibiting Holocaust denial? If there are still people crazy enough to deny that the Holocaust occurred, will they be persuaded by imprisoning people who express that view? On the contrary, they will be more likely to think that people are being imprisoned for expressing views that cannot be refuted by evidence and argument alone.

In his classic defense of freedom of speech in On Liberty, John Stuart Mill wrote that if a view is not "fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed," it will become "a dead dogma, not a living truth." The existence of the Holocaust should remain a living truth, and those who are skeptical about the enormity of the Nazi atrocities should be confronted with the evidence for it.

IN THE aftermath of World War II, when the Austrian republic was struggling to establish itself as a democracy, it was reasonable, as a temporary emergency measure, for Austrian democrats to suppress Nazi ideas and propaganda. But that danger is long past. Austria is a democracy and a member of the EU. Despite the occasional resurgence of anti-immigrant and even racist views - an occurrence that is, lamentably, not limited to countries with a fascist past - there is no longer a serious threat of any return to Nazism in Austria.

By contrast, freedom of speech is essential to democratic regimes, and it must include the freedom to say what everyone else believes to be false, and even what many people find offensive. We must be free to deny the existence of God, and to criticize the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha, as reported in texts that millions of people regard as sacred. Without that freedom, human progress will always run up against a basic roadblock.

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

To be consistent with that clear statement - and without the vague qualifications of Article 11, which threaten to render it meaningless - Austria should repeal its law against Holocaust denial. Other European nations with similar laws - for example, Germany, France, Italy, and Poland - should do the same, while maintaining or strengthening their efforts to inform their citizens about the reality of the Holocaust and why the racist ideology that led to it should be rejected.

LAWS AGAINST incitement to racial, religious or ethnic hatred, in circumstances where that incitement is intended to - or can reasonably be foreseen to - lead to violence or other criminal acts, are different, and are compatible with maintaining freedom to express any views at all.

Only when David Irving has been freed will it be possible for Europeans to turn to the Islamic protesters and say: "We apply the principle of freedom of expression evenhandedly, whether it offends Muslims, Christians, Jews or anyone else."

The writer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, is the author of, among other books, Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna. This piece was provided through www.project-syndicate.org.