JERUSALEM,
June 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli occupation forces
arrested seven foreign peace activists, plus a Jordanian journalist,
in the reoccupied Palestinian refugee camp of Balata at the weekend
and took them in handcuffs to Tel Aviv airport, where they risked
being expelled, the Israeli far left group Gush Shalom said Sunday,
June 2.
Gush
Shalom, whose name means the Bloc for Peace, said the eight foreigners
were abducted by Israeli forces during its Friday, May 31 incursion
into the Balata refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Nablus,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
It
said the seven activists, comprising one person each from the United
States, Britain, France, Denmark, Japan, Australia and Iceland, were
asking leave to appeal to the Israeli supreme court against their
expulsion.
The
peace activists went to Balata to "check that the Israeli army
was not infringing on the human rights of the residents of the refugee
camps," a Gush Shalom statement said, according to AFP.
Separately,
the national Jordanian news agency Petra reported that one of its
journalists had been arrested by Israeli troops in the West Bank town
of Nablus.
The
journalist was jailed by the Israeli army in Nablus, which is under a
three-day-old Israeli reoccupation, Petra reported Sunday night.
"Mashur
Abu Eid was arrested Friday by the Israeli forces during their
incursion into Nablus where he was covering a protest by Western peace
activists," Petra said, adding that the Jordanian foreign
ministry was in contact with Israel to secure Abu Eid's release.
Israeli
forces were continuing their offensive in Balata late on Sunday.
Inhabitants
said the Israeli occupation forces were going from house to house by
smashing through dividing walls, rather than venturing in the streets,
for fear of Palestinian retaliation.
The
army earlier said it had blown up a house in Balata which it claimed
was allegedly found to contain a bomb-making workshop.
Israeli
forces reoccupied Nablus and Balata at dawn on Friday.
Hours
after German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called for “diplomacy,
negotiations and peace” in the Middle East, the Israeli army made a
large-scale incursion into early Friday, reoccupying part of the
Palestinian self-rule town and the Balata refugee camp.
The
three-day offensive, which involved infantry units, backed by around
50 tanks, armored vehicles and personnel carriers under cover of
helicopter gunships, was the latest of Israel's now daily raids into
Palestinian self-rule towns.
