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Israelis Use Cameras To Monitor Palestinians
JERUSALEM, April 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Israeli police officer, with his M-16 rifle strapped to his back, presses on through the streets of Jerusalem's Old City. Through an earphone attached to his helmet, a video-surveillance system is guiding him to a group of Palestinian "rebels".
When the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, broke out six months ago to protest Israeli transgression on Islamic holy sites, Israeli police found in the 420 video cameras, originally set up for millennium celebrations and the pope's pilgrimage, a ready-to-use Big Brother tool to keep a close watch on a potentially rebellious people.
The one square kilometer (nearly half a square mile) labyrinth of the Old City is covered by these digital eyes, placed on every main street, or sometimes just to guard the door of a Jewish home in the heart of the Arab district.
Near the Damascus Gate (deliberately called Jaffa by the Israelis to stamp out its Arab character), one of the main entry points into the Old City, a street lamp has lost its bulb, replaced by a bunch of four cameras transmitting all they see to police headquarters.
The network is centered a few blocks away in the Armenian quarter, where a huge screen monitors pictures from at least 20 cameras simultaneously, 24 hours a day. When a suspect is spotted, the police officers on duty can follow and record his progress from street to street.
"Every move you make is watched. A youth just needs to be carrying a stone, and the police will know about it within minutes," says a foreigner who has lived in Jerusalem for a year.
The Old City lies in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured and annexed as part of its capital in 1967 in a move not recognized by the international community and often strongly condemned by the 52-year old Jewish state's Arab neighbors.
"I feel I am more closely watched than a prisoner in his cell," complains a young Arab - a third generation Jerusalem resident - angrily waving his fist at one of the cameras.
Resented by the Old City's Arab population, some of the cameras have been destroyed in the six-month-old Palestinian uprising. But on special occasions such as the weekly "day of rage" called for by Palestinian movements every Friday, Israeli police use heavier video artillery, sending panoramic cameras into the sky on tethered balloons.
"Their zooms are powerful enough to identify an individual or read a number plate," says Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby. To wrap up the video coverage of the area on these high-risk days, Israel also has a helicopter patrolling above the Old City, while security agents videotape every Muslim entering the sensitive al-Aqsa mosque.
"We do this to facilitate the arrest of terrorists [a term used by Israelis to describe occupation resistance activists]," Ben-Ruby says.
Ariel Sharon, then leader of the opposition, sparked the Intifada with a controversial visit to the mosque compound, which sits on top of a site also holy to Jews.
The hardline former general took office as prime minister last month pledging to crack down on what Israel calls Palestinian "terror attacks" and has been uncompromising in his tough policies. "We have always been kept under close watch," says an old shopkeeper, "but this is like a movie. It's Hollywood."
Since the beginning of the Intifada, some 382 Palestinians, 71 Israelis, 13 Muslim Arabs and one German, living in what's now called Israel, have died, according to Western news agencies.
Palestinians estimate that some 11,000 Palestinians have been injured, with 3,000 permanently handicapped.
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