Agence France Presse  --  Arab News

JENIN, West Bank, 1 May 2004 — Armed Jewish settlers yesterday stormed a northern West Bank village on the Israeli side of a controversial wall and threatened to “expel” the Palestinians, security sources said. The some 20 settlers invaded Im Rihan, near Jenin, in force and fired shots in the air before taking over the school, the Palestinian sources said.

They told the 300 residents of the village, which is surrounded by seven settlements, to go nearby Yaabad, on the other side of Israel’s West Bank separation wall.

The villagers had tried to contact the Israeli Army about the raid, but to no avail, Education Ministry official and resident Faruat Zaid told AFP. Both the Israeli Army and police said they were unaware of the incident.

Thousands of Palestinians rallied in the Gaza Strip yesterday to protest against a Palestinian Authority freeze on the bank accounts of Islamic charities made under US pressure. Protest organizers said the Authority blocked 39 accounts of 12 charities in mid-2003 after Washington demanded a crackdown on institutions suspected of aiding Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups that it classifies as “terrorist”.

It was the latest and biggest in a series of demonstrations organized over the past few months to press the Palestinian Authority to unfreeze the accounts. Protesters, some of them in wheelchairs, took to the streets in four Gaza refugee camps calling on President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei to release the accounts.

“Thousands of needy families, thousands of orphans and thousands wounded and bereaved ask Qorei and Arafat to give back their rights,” an activist cried through a loudspeaker in the teeming Nusseirat camp.

Meanwhile, Arafat’s representative in Lebanon warned yesterday that US interests around the world would be struck if Israel carries out its threat to assassinate the Palestinian leader. “Harming Arafat will transform our people abroad into time bombs to strike American interests around the world,” Sultan Abul Ainain told a demonstration of more than 10,000 at the Rashidiyeh refugee camp in Tyre.

Abul Ainain said the Palestinians would never accept to have leaders appointed with the help of the United States such as Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and Iraq’s interim Governing Council. “They will never impose on us leaders like Karzai or the Iraqi interim Governing Council, they will never change our Palestinian flag like they did in Iraq,” he said.

“Jenin and Fallujah are the same: they are resisting the American occupation,” he said in reference to the Palestinian West Bank center of opposition to Israeli troops and the Iraqi city battling US Marines. Waving portraits of the veteran leader and Palestinian flags, the crowd filled the streets of Rashidiyeh while denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s threat to assassinate Arafat.

“We pledge allegiance to you Arafat, from Lebanon and the diaspora,” shouted the refugees, many of whom had been bussed to Rashidiyeh from other camps around the country to take part in the demonstration.

In another development, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent Arafat a letter this week telling the Palestinian leader that an Israeli plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip could re-energize the flagging peace process.

In the letter, seen here by AFP yesterday, Annan reiterated his position that both Israel and the Palestinians must fulfill their commitments under the internationally backed roadmap plan for Middle East peace.

The letter comes ahead of a meeting in New York on Tuesday of the so-called quartet — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — that sponsors the plan. Annan was responding to a letter from Arafat expressing concern about the Gaza pullout proposal put forward by Sharon, which is strongly backed by the United States.