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| Middle East |
| Israel plans to reduce presence in some West Bank areas |
| 2002-07-11 |
| The Israeli army plans to start reducing its presence in West Bank areas determined to be at low risk for staging attacks. The army will leave some cities altogether and thin out its presence in others. Israeli officials have said they are examining ways of relieving conditions in the West Bank, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live under curfews that are lifted from time to time for a few hours. The governor of Bethlehem, Mohammed Madani, warned that the Israeli reoccupation was hurtling the city towards a humanitarian crisis. The IDF lifted the curfew on Nablus from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm Thursday, but was not allowing people from the surrounding villages into the city, blocking around 1,000 people at checkpoints. They can't keep them bottled up forever, but they have to go back and bottle them up again as soon as the stupidity starts up again. In the case of Nablus, that's yesterday. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |