We have had a week of curfew here in Jenin. Every day we are uncertain whether it is in effect or not, due to the lack of announcements until the jeeps, Apcs and tanks roll into town. Yesterday at 4am was typical: the jeeps drove around neighborhoods with a loudspeaker proclaiming in Arabic, "you sons of bitches, stay in your houses". This was punctuated with the soldiers playing Palestinian wedding folksongs at full volume, and intense, haphazard shooting.

Palestinians plan their day -- opening the businesses, getting food, and attending classes -- around these random and often deadly visits by the jeeps.

Apaches Revisit Jenin Camp

Yesterday morning was particularly severe. The soldiers blew up a house in Wadi Burkin, a village situated outside Jenin camp. They rounded up the young men in the area, holding them for questioning. Meanwhile in the camp all morning, two Apaches circled at close range, shooting into the camp. Tanks, Apc's and jeeps entered the city from all roads, and the mayor of Jenin was notified by the Israeli military that they intended to blow up the Nadi Youth and Cultural center in the camp.

Internationals from Spain, France, the U.S., Britain, Ireland, and Canada maintained a presence around Birkin and around the youth center through the tear gas and threats of arrest. Ambulances meanwhile crisscrossed through town overloaded with emergency cases, harassed by the soldiers in tanks.

Finally the military withdrew from Jenin's town and camp mid afternoon, the youth center still intact but the men, women, and children in the area deeply shaken, thus ending another day of nerve shattering harassment. Jenin's Ground Zero Cleanup Halted Once Again

Today the cleanup of Jenin's Ground Zero is again at a standstill. The U.N., through negotiations with the Israelis, has estimated that to cleanup the vast totally destroyed area will take about three months. A team concentrating on removing all the unexploded ordinances from April's enormous missile assault, bulldozers and trucks hauling the debris have a daunting task in front of them.

The cleanup team has been allowed to work two days out of the scheduled eight days so far. And during those two working days, their trucks have experience great difficulty getting through the impromptu tank roadblocks on the town's outskirts, enroute to the land outside the village of Yamoon (about several kilometers away) where the debris has been negotiated with the Israelis to be dumped.

More civilians shot...

As mentioned earlier, when jeeps and tanks enter Jenin and camp announcing curfew, they usually AIM and shoot at anyone still on the streets. Nearly all are children - average age seven and eight.

Five days ago the Israeli military occupied Palestinian homes in Jenin's Old City for a day and night, while they conducted their military operations. Three teenage boys who are best known to us for hanging out at the internet cafe, talking and joking with us, were shot by Israeli snipers in the occupied buildings as they walked through the Old City that day towards their homes. One got a bullet in the chest, one in the legs, and the other in the middle of his back. There is no doubt the snipers were aiming to kill.

Miraculously, the two shot in the chest and legs are okay after operations, and are getting back to their old joking selves. The other one though (seventeen years old and the studious, shy one of the group) had to be transferred to Nablus where he underwent two operations. The doctors had to remove two disks from his spine, resulting in him being paralyzed from the chest on down. He will also never be able to have children.

Two more teenagers were badly shot later that day, as well as an eleven-year-old boy from the nearby village of Yamoon.

I leave you just now as I hear the tanks! roll through the market place just outside this window to impose the daily curfew, accompanied with many bursts of automatic tank fire and two big blasts.