By Isabel Kershner 25 Febbraio 2008

EREZ CROSSING, Gaza: Five thousand protesters in the Gaza Strip marched to the border fence with Israel on Monday, demonstrating against the embargo imposed by Israel since the Islamic militant group Hamas took over Gaza last June.

The Israeli Army had bolstered its forces on the Israeli side of the border, and there were concerns in Israel that many Gaza residents might try to break through the fence, as they breached the border with Egypt last month.

The protesters formed human chains in some places along the border, and schoolchildren were brought in by buses for the demonstrations. But the number of protesters was fewer than had been expected. They approached the Erez crossing at the border but were stopped by Hamas police officers. They did not try to approach the border fence in other areas.

After the peaceful protest ended, a group of Palestinians rioted at the Erez crossing, throwing stones. They tried to approach the Israeli side, and Israeli troops fired shots into the air to disperse them. The Israeli Army said 49 Palestinians were arrested.

Palestinian advocates had called on residents to form a human chain along the Gaza side, from Rafah in the south to Beit Hanun in the north, to protest the embargo. Israel recently tightened the blockade in response to intensified rocket fire from the strip.

On Monday, militants in Gaza fired three Qassam rockets at the southern town of Sderot, a regular target of Palestinian rocket fire. An Israeli boy, 10, was seriously wounded by shrapnel and was undergoing surgery at a hospital in Ashkelon.

Last month, Hamas militants blew up sections of a wall along the Gaza-Egypt border, and residents poured into the Egyptian Sinai to shop. The border remained open for 11 days.

That event had raised concerns ahead of the protest Monday. "The army has made the appropriate preparations in accordance with the Palestinian reports," an Israeli Army spokeswoman said Sunday, speaking on the condition of anonymity under army rules.

The Israeli Channel 2 television reported that the army had increased its artillery units along the border.

Jamal el Khoudary, an organizer of the demonstration in Gaza, is an independent lawmaker leading a popular campaign against the blockade. He said Sunday night that the demonstration was meant to be peaceful and that there was "no intention of turning to violence."

Faced with the prospect of continuing rocket fire by militants from Gaza, the Israeli cabinet also approved a plan on Sunday to build fortified rooms in thousands of Israeli homes within about five kilometers, or three miles, of the Gaza border.

More than $90 million has been allocated for the first stage of the project, a cabinet statement said. That will cover about 3,600 of the 8,000 homes within the designated range needing fortification, Israel Radio said. Legislation requires homes built since 1992 to include protected spaces.

Homes beyond the five-kilometer range are to be protected by a new $225 million antimissile defense system, to become operational sometime in 2010, the cabinet said.

According to the Israeli police, 13 civilians have been killed by the rockets since 2001, including two Israeli youths who were handling an unexploded rocket.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the overall plan for countering the rocket threat from Gaza as "a combination of several systems," including military action.

Olmert said recently that the army had killed more than 200 Palestinian combatants in Gaza in recent months. According to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, Israeli forces killed 290 Palestinians in Gaza in 2007, about a third of them civilians not taking part in hostilities when they were killed.

An Israeli missile strike in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday killed at least one militant and wounded two others, Reuters reported. An earlier airstrike killed two militants near the border.

Relatives of three Palestinian men killed by an Israeli Army missile in northern Gaza on Saturday insisted Sunday that the men were not involved in any armed activity. Army officials had said Saturday that the men were armed and on their way to fire mortar shells at Israel.

Palestinians identified the three as Muhammad Zaanin, 22, a student at the Islamic University and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant leftist group; Ibrahim Abu Jarad, 23, an employee of the Palestinian Authority and a supporter of the mainstream Fatah faction; and Muhammad Hasanin, 23, an employee of the Bank of Jordan and also a Fatah supporter.

Sabir Zaanin, a cousin of the student, said Sunday that the three had been sitting in an onion field, making tea and preparing a picnic.

"I kept searching for any evidence that can justify Israel's action but didn't find any," Zaanin said.

The leaders of the negotiating teams, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel, and Ahmed Qurei, a former Palestinian prime minister, held a meeting on Sunday of 10 experts from each side. The experts will meet regularly to discuss civil, economic and judicial issues, like water and the environment, said Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Livni.

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.


by Isabel Kershner

Source >  IHT