Palestine Follow

LEADERS ACROSS the Middle East are terrified that Israel's war on the Palestinians will provoke wide scale revolt. Representatives from Egypt and Jordan have pleaded with Bush to help them quell unrest by appearing to check Sharon's excesses. Anne Adams has just visited Egypt. She says the Arab rulers are right to be fearful of the pro-Palestinian movement.

THERE WERE 15 people at the Marxist forum in Canterbury on Thursday of last week on "Israeli terror and the new intifada: can Jews and Arabs live in peace?" One of those there writes:

THOUSANDS OF people across Britain have taken to the streets to show their anger against Israel's military onslaught against Palestine. In London hundreds gathered outside the Israeli embassy, the US embassy and Downing Street nearly every day last week.

Saturday 13 April Demonstrate for the Palestinian people. Assemble 2pm, Hyde Park, London, for march to Trafalgar Square.

Thousands marched through central London on Saturday as part of CND's "Don't Start Wars" protest. Many carried placards denouncing war with Iraq, while others carried Palestinian flags. Socialist Worker sellers petitioned demonstrators calling for justice for Palestine. Well over 800 copies of Socialist Worker were sold, with over 40 people joining the Socialist Workers Party.

The deaths of over 160 Palestinians and more than 30 Israelis in 12 days at the beginning of this month shocked people across the world. Socialist Worker looks at the roots of the conflict.

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has unleashed slaughter on the Palestinian people. Look at the pictures on this page. They show Israeli soldiers executing 23 year old Palestinian Mahmoud Salah on a Jerusalem Street on Friday of last week.

Socialist Worker sellers were out last week campaigning against Sharon's onslaught on the Palestinians. In just three days over 500 copies of Socialist Worker were sold on the streets in central London. In Kensington on a new sale nine sellers (including five new members) received a brilliant reception-160 copies of Socialist Worker were sold and four people joined the SWP.

Children ripped apart by tank shells as they play. Women shot dead by army snipers in their own homes. Houses smashed to rubble by F-16 fighter jets. A doctor deliberately shot dead in his own ambulance as he rushes to help the injured. This is the reality of Ariel Sharon's massacre of Palestinian civilians. It is the reality that the British media try to ignore. They concentrate on reporting only the Israeli casualties.

Distinguished writer Edward Said on a new initiative to end Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The Israeli army plans to build a mock Palestinian city in the middle of the desert to practise laying siege to Palestinian areas. Senior Israeli army sources openly talk of carrying out increasingly large-scale operations invading Palestinian areas.

Coincidence? You decide. Elie Hobeika was blown up by a car bomb in Beirut, Lebanon, three weeks ago. He was a leader of one of the Lebanese fascist groups which massacred over 2,500 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut in 1982. Hobeika had agreed to give evidence to a Belgian inquiry into the role of current Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in the atrocity.