In addition, Israeli troops arrested one of Sami's friends in the village, Emad Yehya, after raiding and thoroughly searching his home. The forces arrested six other citizens from the village, including a woman, raising the number of detainees to 12.

Furthermore, more than 30 Israeli military vehicles rolled into Jenin City amidst heavy gunfire and stun grenade firing, forcing bystanders to stand against the wall and take their clothes off, in spite of the cold weather.

In the meantime, eyewitnesses mentioned that Israeli forces invaded the city of Nablus with more than 80 military vehicles, and conducted a massive search-and-arrest campaign in different parts of the city last night, which resulted in 15 injuries and four arrests among the citizens.

The witnesses also stated that Israeli soldiers commandeered a number of houses in the city and set-up military watch points inside them, after herding the residents to small rooms within the houses.

Earlier, a group of armed Israeli settlers from the illegal settlement "Alon Moreh", northeast of Nablus, forcibly seized 32 sheep after raiding the nearby village of Deir El Hatab on Monday evening.

Local sources added that more 20 armed settlers raided the village and stacked the villagers and their properties.

In Tulkarem province, Israeli forces stormed the city of Tulkarem and its refugee camp early this morning, and arrested seven citizens and led them to an undisclosed location.

At the same context, Israeli forces closed all the entrances and exits of the city, preventing traffic into or outside the city.

Local sources said Israeli soldiers closed the Jbara and Annab military checkpoints, and set up a number of mobile roadblocks on the main roads and dirt paths leading into the city, while establishing patrols on the Bal'a Town junction and the roads leading to the villages of Sha'raweya and Deir El Ghosoon.

Perhaps as we watch the Israelis enter their voting booths on the 28th, we might hope that the branding of Israel as a genocidal nation might cause a twinge of moral outrage and put into office a government that would seek reconciliation with the Palestinians rather than devastation of them. Perhaps the world communities might get a chance to see behind the veil of silence that shrouds what takes place in Palestine and keeps the horror from the eyes of Americans and Europeans. Perhaps a new Israeli government would recognize that the election of Hamas is an opportunity for peace since it represents the views of the vast majority of Palestinians and not a threat to be discounted because it did not represent voters in Israel. Perhaps a free democratic election tells us something we don't want to admit: justice must be sought for all, not just those the Israelis want to appease because they do what Israelis want. Perhaps the Israeli wall of silence that makes the reality in Palestine invisible to all can be breached because of the democratic elections that have taken place in Palestine if the Israelis will match that effort.

The sower of deceit spreads his seed upon the fertile soil of ignorance, waters it with repetition, and covers it with silence. For five years, America and Israel, under Bush and Sharon, have spread seeds of deceit on minds made fertile to receive it by a controlled press, titillation news programs, and a disinterested public made lethargic by discomfort and fear. But in 2005 the seeds had germinated, broken through the soil and cast their evil smell over the lands, here and in Palestine. Now Bush and the American people await the disassembling of the Bush regime as the Libby lies, the Abramoff payoffs, the DeLay lobbying industry, the Rumsfeld Defense debacle, the torture scenes that never end, the Katrina catastrophe, the isolation of the United States by unilateral arrogance, the terror caused by our subservience to Sharon and his inhumane imprisonment of Palestinians, the ineluctable civil war that engulfs our liberated friends in Iraq, the impending repetition of Iraq in Iran, and death by debt once we are forced to disembark from Iraq's shores, tear apart the fabric of America.

And now, while we await the elections in Israel, we sense that it, too, will disassemble as the revelations of its spying on America cover the front pages and replace the titillation of our news broadcasts with real news. Witness what even our controlled press must contend with if it is not to remain a joke:

- Two convicted employees of AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in Washington, expose their traitorous behavior before the American people revealing just how "friendly" Israel is to the US thus reopening the gates to prior Israeli espionage that surfaced in 2001 on Fox news only to be silenced by the power of AIPAC.

- On its web site, AIPAC brags that it wrote the legislation that became the Syrian Accountability and Lebanon Restoration Act, thus pushing America into another confrontation in the mid-east as it had pushed America into the war against Iraq despite the lack of WMD or any means whatsoever of invading or destroying America;

- Another Israel support group, PNAC, that is under the control of the Neo-cons that have absconded with our government, declared now the source of the National Security Strategy Report that yokes the Bush administration to Israeli interests, a document that had its origins in 1992 and, in its revised form as a document prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu, "Securing the Realm," became our official foreign policy under Bush in September 2002;

- Repetition ad nauseam of silencing any criticism of Sharon's heinous government that has flaunted international law and the United Nations or any activity that represents the Palestinian reality like the stopping of the musical concert, "The Skies Are Weeping" and the play My Name Is Rachel using the ubiquitous "anti-Semitic" to force censorship;

- And, finally, in this litany of cancers inflicted on America by its purported friend, the disclosure that the American taxpayer contributes one third of its foreign aid budget to the 16th wealthiest nation on the planet, with a population that represents .001% of the world's population, supporting in the process the resettlement of thousands of immigrants from foreign lands to Israel, a foreign country, where they can reside in luxury town homes with lush grounds and pools, while our New Orleans residents, the majority classified African-American and living below the poverty line, remain scattered throughout the country unable to return to their homes.

Perhaps these disclosures will echo through the halls of Congress and the Senate, waking our representatives to their biased and bought support for Israel that has brought America such democratic values as pre-emptive strikes, extrajudicial execution, torture on demand, kidnapping to countries we condemn in public and pay off for torture in private (Syria of the Syrian Accountability Act), collective punishment including walling in innocent civilians in Iraq, disinformation to enable willing administration members to lie to the American people as they prepared us for unending war, hidden budget information that covered the reality of our support for the illegal occupation of Palestine, and, in all brazen hypocrisy, to place America before the world as a partner to the allegedly genocidal actions of Sharon's government as he strangled the Palestinians constituting a war crime of unfathomable dimensions.

To do it in my name I cannot condone, nor sit idly by as America becomes a rogue state that is seen world wide as the instigator of terror not the victim of it. Disassembling democracy demands dissent. I condemn both this government and that of Israel under Sharon because it is my duty as a citizen; I condemn as well the atrocities resulting from those who resort to violence against the civilian as their last expression of vengeance and despair since it, like oppression, fosters only greater evil, and I do so as a brother to all. Yet, having done so, I will be labeled an anti-Semite and anti-American. Neither is the case. Those who say nothing let silence shroud their judgment placing them in the phalanx of those who carry out the crimes.

Let it be said loud and clear, Israel alone can bring peace to the mid-east. Despite its protestations to the contrary, Israel exists as a major military force in the world, a silent member of the nuclear club, the only such in the mid-east. Yet it cries wolf to the world that Hamas threatens its existence even as Hamas stands imprisoned behind Israeli walls unable to leave by land, sea or water without Israeli IDF approval, unable to receive goods of any kind, including weapons of consequence with which to face the third largest military in the world. Thus does the oppressor become the victim.

That is the reality in Palestine and it has forced the people to elect an organization that has no obligations to the Israeli government or to the United States, only to them. They have nothing to lose but everything to gain. The United States extolled the virtues of democracy, the right of a people to choose their own government, especially in the mid-east, and they responded in a manner that puts the elections of 2000 and 2004 in this country to shame only to find that Bush didn't mean what he said nor did its erstwhile partner in democracy in the mid-east, Israel.

But this election is a victory for the Palestinian people; it is the catapult that can breach the Walls of the Israeli prison which has silenced the Palestinians so completely under the PLO, a hapless group made "irrelevant" by Sharon and Bush. And that reality Israel fears more than any army or terrorism Hamas can field against them; indeed, the continuation of terrorism benefits Israel because it supports their arguments for further lock downs and imprisonment and house demolitions and land confiscation. But if Hamas can invite Putin and Chirac and Chavez and diplomats from around the world to Ramallah, if the TV cameras arrive to put before the world the tangible humiliation that wraps the Palestinian people in the infectious disease of Israeli dominance in every facet of their day to day existence, then, perhaps, the devastating silence, the absolute muffling of their voice, the solitary confinement imposed by Israel on an entire people locked behind Walls of cement and steel, prevented from speaking out against this intolerable and illegal imprisonment, will be broken and the truth revealed to all the world.

That is what Israel and the Bush administration fear, the truth that exposes their lies, their absolute disregard for international law, the defiance of all UN resolutions that have condemned Israel for disregard of human rights, the theft of another people's land, the illegal imprisonment of 8000 without charge, the abandonment of due justice before the courts as IDF soldiers and settlers who kill at will go free, the infliction of hundreds of military check points throughout the West Bank, the acres upon acres of demolished homes that give the IDF freedom to incarcerate the inhabitants of Gaza, the collective punishment that Israel imposes on the Palestinian people by home demolition, the stealing of land, the destruction of their fields and produce, and by torture. This Israel rightly fears. This disassembling of their total control of what the world sees will be the battering ram that destroys the deceit that has made Hamas the fearsome enemy that can bring devastation to Israel and its people.

When this Wall of silence is breached, when the truth is made manifest, what the world will see and what Jews around the world will see, is that Sharon has destroyed the moral fiber of Judaism. What Jews suffered under the boots of Nazi Germany - the humiliation, torture, powerlessness, and fear - impressed on them by a racist nation arrogant in their superiority, the Israelis now inflict on the hapless people of Palestine. What Jews suffered in concentration camps, isolated from the world's communities that did not see their pain, existed because world leaders heeded only the voice of Hitler, tolerated the deceit that hid the reality, and accepted the truth of the oppressor not the truth of walls, and chain link fences, and barbed wire, and guard towers, and ID cards and symbols of identification that imprisoned the Jews in body, mind and spirit. What the Jews of the holocaust bequeathed to all humankind as a moral legacy must not be lost again; it is a legacy at once unique in its awareness of the sacredness of each living being and in its acceptance of the responsibility each has to each, a blessed union built on tolerance for all. Jews throughout the world have reacted against Sharon's savagery but have been as helpless to stop it as Americans have been to stop Bush from destroying America.

This silence, built like the four hundred miles of cement forms, barbed wire and steel that entombs the Palestinians as though it stood an eloquent testimonial of racism run rampant, Sharon's epitaph for his life of crime, begins now to unravel as the lies and deceit fall away and the sun's light rises above the debris left in its wake. The Palestinian quiet revolution, the election of a government by the people, of the people, and for the people, has the potential to let the sun shine in and open the door to peace, if only the world would treat that government with the respect it deserves. And that brings us back to the Israeli election this month, an election that can force its new government to move ineluctably toward real peace or to continue the violence that comes with spreading fear.

Israel can force America to sue for peace before the United Nations, to seek from that community of nations, from the community of Arab nations in particular, a Peace Force to stand along the green line while Israel recalls its forces back to the land it owns and returns to its rightful owners the land confiscated in the 1967 war, acceptance if you will of UN Resolution 242. It can return all stolen land, tear down the hideous monument to fear erected by Sharon, accept the internationally recognized right of return, and abjure violence against the Palestinians even as Hamas and the people of Palestine abjure all violence against the Israelis, all overseen in a new era of openness by the United Nations. It is the sower of peace and prosperity not the sower of discord and deceit that assures the harvest; it is in trust and tolerance not accusation and anger that accord can be reached; it is in recognition of right and justice for all not fanatical beliefs for those initiated that renders peace possible. That is the choice the Israelis bring to the election booth this month, and their choice will usher in a day of calm for all the world, or a day of chaos.

William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy. He is a regular contributor to Palestine Chronicle.com

The boy survived and was not hospitalized, but the psychological impact of the act, Stanley suggested, breeds fear in the neighborhood's dwindling Palestinian population.

Another story detailed the abuse of a small child.

"A female Israeli settler used a rock to pry open a young Palestinian boy's mouth. She used the rock to grind down the child's molars," Stanley said.

The speakers named what they called the settlers' other staple methods of abuse. They allegedly included stoning, arson, beatings, destruction of property and violence inflicted by even young Israeli children.

"Israeli settlers have found a loophole in the law that states that no one under the age of 12 can be held responsible for their actions. The attacks that appear in the most visible areas are often initiated by very young boys and girls," Harmer said.

He explained that though many of the attacks are executed by children who are exempt from the law, violence perpetrated by adult men and women settlers is common and is in no way impeded by the local Israeli police and military.

In fact - the speakers suggested - the oppression Palestinians face in Tel Rumeida is exacerbated by the favoritism of the local Israeli military presence. The activist group reports that, though soldiers are bound by law to protect every individual in the neighborhood, violence against Palestinian residents is apparently openly tolerated.

To illustrate this point, Stanley related a tragedy in which a Palestinian woman lost two unborn twins during an attack by settlers. According to Stanley, the woman shouted repeatedly for help to nearby soldiers to no avail, and finally resorted to calling the Israeli police. Her son was attacked while the police refused to come to her home. Finally, after hearing the death threats screamed over the phone, the police arrived after a long delay. The woman later miscarried both of her twins and was forced to take a long detour around hostile settlements to reach a hospital.

Harmer claimed that the Israeli police in this area - who have come under fire from Israeli officials for their discrimination of Palestinians - often hang up on Arabic callers before their complaints or emergencies are relayed.

Both speakers began visiting Tel Rumeida in 2005, where they were immediately exposed to the daily life of local Palestinians. The speakers believed their observations warranted documenting, so throughout 2005 the activists filmed incidents of violence which will be compiled into a documentary in two to three months. Many of the clips are available on the Project's Web site, which allows viewers to download the materially freely.

During their stay in Tel Rumeida, Stanley, Harmer and other international human rights workers acted as human shields against assailants, accompanying Palestinians through the streets and attempting to ward off attacks.

"We get in between the settler and the person being attacked. We scream at them and videotape the attack. With these settlers we know that we're not going to stop the violence so we just try to redirect the attacks on ourselves," Stanley said.

Stanford was just one stop along a circuit of destinations for Stanley and Harmer, who are touring the United States to raise funds for the Tel Rumeida Project and recruit new volunteers. The project seeks to raise $20,000 in the United States, which will be matched by a human rights agency. Most of the funds will go toward buying new video cameras for the project.

An IDF spokesman issued a statement expressing grief over any "damage inflicted upon civilians or their property," but stressed that "this is the inevitable result of the continuing Qassam rocket attacks, the responsibility for which falls upon the terrorist organizations and the Palestinian Authority which does nothing to stop them."

The IDF has been firing at areas where militants launch cross-border rocket attacks.

Ovayed is the second civilian killed in the northern Gaza Strip in less than a week. The last victim was a 12-year-old girl who was also killed by a shell.

Dozens of IDF soldiers and jeeps rolled into the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday afternoon, shortly after an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed nine people in the old central bus station in Tel Aviv.

The troops moved into the center of the city, where they began carrying out arrests.

The IDF has arrested 15 would-be suicide bombers in the West Bank over the past month.

Earlier Monday IDF soldiers holed up in a home in Nablus opened fire on a crowd of stone-throwing protesters outside the building, wounding two people, including a 13-year-old boy, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.

The soldiers took over the top floor of the home during a military operation early Monday, and protesters quickly gathered outside after discovering the forces. The crowd began throwing rocks toward the soldiers, who placed a door behind a window and responded with gunfire. Several crowd members also fired pistols toward troops during the exchange.

Palestinian hospital officials said the youth was shot in the neck and in moderate condition. A second person was lightly wounded, they said.

"When he was wounded in the neck, he ran toward me before collapsing and the blood gushed from his neck," said Ana Maria Espinoza, a pro-Palestinian volunteer from Chile. She said more than 100 protesting youths were gathered behind a wall about 100 meters (yards) from the house, which is located in a residential neighborhood near a school.

An armored AP jeep also was hit by Israeli gunfire, suffering minor damage. Nablus is a stronghold of Palestinian militants.

The army said its forces had come under fire in the area, but had no further details.

That's the thing about occupation-it invades even your most private of spaces. And while the shells were falling inside my head, they also killed little Hadil Ghabin today.

A shell landed on her home in Beit Lahiya, shattering her helpless body and injuring five members of her family, including Hadil's pregnant mother, Safia, and her 19-year-old sister.

My headeaches seem inconsequential when I think of little Hadil. Sometimes people here say they prefer death to this existence; you'll frequently here at funerals: "Irta'at"...she's

more comfortable now anyhow-what was there to live for here?

The Earth is squeezing us. I wish we were its wheat
so we could die and live again.

That has become our sad reality. Death provides relief.

Sometimes it feels like we are all in some collective torture room; who is playing God with us this night, I wonder? When I look up into the sky, and hear the shells, or see the faceless helicopter gunships cruising intently through the moonlit sky, I wonder, do they see me?

And when the shells start falling again, I can't help but imagine some beside-himself with boredom 18-year-old on the border, lighting a cig or SMSing his girlfriend back in Tel Aviv "just a few more rounds to go hon.....give it another whirl, Ron, its been 2 minutes already."

Sometimes, when I'm on edge, I might just yell out and wave my arms at them.

Do they hear me?

We decided to escape this evening to my father's farm in central Gaza, where we roasted potatoes and warmed tea on a small mangal, as we listened to thikr about the Prophet on the occasion of his mawlid from a nearby mosque, under the ominous roars of fighter jets, patrolling the otherwise lonely skies above.

"Where are you heading off to?" asked Osama, the shopkeeper downstairs.

"Off to the farm. We're suffocating," I replied, Yousuf tugging at my arm ...

"Mama...Yallah! Yallah!"

"Wallah Laila, we're not just suffocating...we're asphyxiating. I feel I can't breathe anymore. And my head is pounding and pounding. All I hear is BOOM boom now."

The Earth is closing in on us.

And little Hadil is dead.

Samir Hammad, 21, a student at the al-Quds Open University, managed to evade Israel's ubiquitous army checkpoints on the West Bank and reached Tel Aviv where he carried out the bombing at a falafel sandwich stand on Monday.

The attack was claimed by the Islamic Jihad group, which did not sign to the Cairo-brokered truce in July last year. Hamas, which formed the new Palestinian cabinet last month, did.

Struggling Family

Hammad came from Burqa, a village near the northern West Bank town of Jenin where electricity is available only at night.

His father Samih, a 50-year-old municipal worker in Jenin, could hardly make ends meet to feed his nine children.

"It is the Israeli oppression," said the mother of five.

"We don't like to see innocent people, including Jews, killed. But when they kill our children on a daily basis, our hearts are hardened and we try to make them drink from the same cup they have been forcing us to drink from all these years," she said, reflecting a sentiment shared by most in Burqa.

"They are killing our people on a daily basis, starving us, preventing us from work, and turning our daily life into an unbearable hell. So how are we supposed to behave under such circumstances? What are we supposed to do, kill ourselves?

"I think Israel is making each and every Palestinian a potential human bomber."

More to Follow

In a video recorded before he set off for the attack, Hammad said he decided to carry out the bombing to avenge the "daily massacres Israel is perpetrating against our people".

He said 40 other martyr-bombers were following him.

Islamic Jihad blamed Israel for pushing the Palestinians to the edge of extermination.

A spokesman for the group told Al Jazeera.net: "If we have to die, we won't die alone."

Soon after it was known that the bomber had come from Burqa, Israeli troops stormed the village and placed it under curfew.

The troops arrested Hammad's father and another man.

It was not immediately clear if the army would destroy Hammad's house - a routine punishment meted out to the families of Palestinian fighters who have killed Israelis.

Last year the Israeli High court ordered the practice suspended, saying that home demolition had very limited deterrence and was morally reprehensible.

Israeli Retaliation

In the meantime, the acting Israeli government was due to discuss "a set of retaliatory measures" against the Palestinians.

According to Israel's public radio, the government was considering one or all of the following measures: targeting the Hamas-led Palestinian government, cutting off the northern West Bank from the rest of the occupied territory and stepping up incursions and arrests.

About 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, many of them without charge or trial.

Hamas Reaction

Meanwhile, the Hamas-led government apparently retreated from earlier statements condoning the bombing.

Ahmed Yussuf, the government's spokesman, said that "the government was sorry for the loss of civilian lives," adding: "We hope that the cycle of bloodshed will come to an end."

Yussuf said: "Continued Israeli killing of Palestinians, as well as mounting oppression and starvation, are pushing Palestinians to the edge.

"Human beings have a limited ability to endure stress and oppression. Ultimately, either they commit suicide or become suicidal bombers."

Mahmoud al-Zahar, the Palestinian foreign minister, who arrived in Riyadh on Monday night, refused to comment on the bombing.

Earlier statements by Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, in which he called the bombing "an act of self-defence," were criticised by Israel and the United States.