Israeli Tally: 4,887 injured, 689 killed, 15,681 attacks 29 September 2000 through 15 December 2002
IDF Spokesperson 16 December 2002

Injured: 3,473 Civilians + 1,414 Security Forces = 4,887 Total Israeli
Injured
Killed: 478 Civilians + 211 Security Forces = 689 Total Israeli Killed
Total Attacks*: 7,063 West Bank + 7,973 Gaza Strip + 645 Home Front =15,681
Total

* Does not include attacks with rocks or firebombs.

Palestine Media Center- (PMC)

Nablus’ residents, who have been living under Israeli occupation and curfew for months, were again the targets of Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), who opened fire Sunday at thousands of civilians trying to reach their schools and work, a day after IOF troops raided and closed the city’s major university.

Thousands of residents-- women, men, and children-- were chased by IOF tanks and armored vehicles, which raided the city in an attempt to enforce a curfew, witnesses said.

Later, occupation troops clashed with hundreds of young men, a majority of them students trying to reach their closed Al-Najah university, after Israeli tanks blocked all the roads leading to it.

13-year old Mu’taz Abu Tyama was wounded with live ammunition and 3 others were wounded with rubber coated steel bullets fired by IOF soldiers, medical sources said.

Earlier on Saturday, occupation soldiers raided Al-Najah University and forced the staff to close and evacuate the compound under gunpoint.

During the raid, three students were slightly injured, university and medical sources said.

This comes after the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) revealed an attempt by the Israeli occupation army to use one of the society’s ambulances during its military operation in Nablus.

The ambulance was carrying a kidney dialysis patient to his home in Al-Sha’ biya neighborhood in the city when it was confiscated by Israeli occupation soldiers, PRCS added.

In the meantime, IOF bulldozing took place in the near by Til village in preparation for the establishment of another metal gate to isolate the city from its surroundings, witnesses said.

Elsewhere in West Bank, Israeli occupation soldiers and armed Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian orchards and agricultural farms east of the West Bank city of Hebron on Sunday.

IOF and settlers, backed by bulldozers, razed and uprooted hundreds of centuries-old olive trees, which provide a source of living for many poor Palestinian families plagued with a dire humanitarian and economic situation.

Several olive orchards at the Baqa’a valley, south of the illegal Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, were crushed, after the Israeli army declared the area ‘a closed military zone.’

“Where in the world a state which claims to be civilized grabs people’s farms and bulldoze their orchards and fruit trees in broad daylight?” asked Mohammed Jaradat, one of the owners of the destroyed orchards.

“Where are human rights groups? Where is (the London-based human rights organization) Amnesty International? Where is Human Rights Watch? Where is the United Nations?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities gave demolition notices to 18 Palestinians from Barta’a Al-Sharqiyya in the northern West Bank City of Jenin, ordering the evacuation of 30 houses, 20 shops and two factories they claimed were built without planning permission.

According to information gathered by the Palestinian human rights organization, LAW, in the early hours of Friday December 13, eighteen Barta’a residents were given 25 notices notifying them that their houses and stores will de destroyed.

These include family homes, commercial stores, sewing factories and an olive press, upon which these families rely for their livelihood.

The village’s council chief, Ghassan Kabaha, told AFP that the owners of the condemned stores who live outside the village had been told not to return to the community.

Barta’a, split down the middle since the fist Arab-Israeli war in 1948, lies on the route of a “security fence” the Israelis plan to construct along the Green Line.

Kabaha said that although the fence was expected to leave the entire village on the Israeli side of the fence, no plans had been revealed to annex the community, stranding it in a security limbo.

In another incident, Israeli guards on Sunday used tear gas to try to quell protesting Palestinian prisoners demanding that one of their friends, injured during arrest, be taken to hospital, a representative of the prisoners told AFP.

Aysa Karaka, head of the Palestinian prisoners society, said the inmates, who number around 1,000 in the Israeli army base of Ofer just outside Ramallah, started shouting and protesting after authorities refused to remove the injured man from the prison facility.

The identity of the injured detainee was not immediately known.

Ofer is one of the main Israeli army jails used to detain Palestinian detainees, thought to number more than 7,000.

Clashes broke out in the prison facility in August when hundreds of detainees clashed with their guards, who called in armored vehicles, the prisoners’ families said earlier.

IOF Kill Three Men, Wound Two Sisters in Gaza Strip

In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian activist was killed by IOF early Monday near the illegal Israeli settlement of “Neve Dekalim”, Palestinian medics said, in what Israeli military sources claimed was an infiltration bid.

Hassan Shalukah, 22, was shot dead outside the Jewish settlement near the Palestinian town of Khan Younis, medical sources at Nasser hospital said.

Moreover, two civilians were shot and killed by the Israeli occupation army at dawn Monday as they tried to enter Israel from the north of the Gaza Strip, Israeli sources claimed.

Adel Shabaat and Mohammed Odwan, both in their early 20s, were gunned down by IOF near the town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinian security sources said.

Two sisters aged 12 and 13 were also seriously injured Sunday by Israeli tank fire during an Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza town of Rafah to demolish houses close to a Jewish settlement, Palestinian officials said.

Medics said 13-year-old Asala Abed al-Selek was hit in the head by a bullet and her 12-year-old sister Yasmine was shot in the chest, as Israel bulldozers moved in to demolish seven houses near the illegal Israeli settlement bloc of “Morag”.