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Newsletter : 0fax0519.txt
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>JN May 19, 2000, Vol. 8, No. 91
Fatah Calls for Increased Violence Today
By IsraelWire
Israeli security forces are bracing for increased Arab violence today and tomorrow following the distribution of fliers throughout PLO Authority autonomous areas by members of Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction, calling for increased violence and attacks against Israeli forces and "settlers" on Friday and Sunday. The fliers are signed by the Fatah Panthers.
Palestinians Accuse Israelis of Violence
By Meredith Buel (VOA-Jerusalem)
Palestinians say an Israeli Army officer threatened to bomb Yasir Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank during clashes earlier this week in which at least three people died and hundreds were injured. The Israeli Army is calling the Palestinian account "inaccurate."
Palestinians say Brig. Gen. Shlomo Oren, commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank, threatened to bomb Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Palestinians say the threat was made earlier this week during clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel's central area commander, Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, called the Palestinian's account of the incident "inaccurate" and "a cynical attempt to evade responsibility for the violence." Israeli cabinet ministers say if the officer issued the threat it did not represent government policy. The controversy came as peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are set to resume in Sweden.
Hizbullah Terrorists Wound Five
By Meredith Buel (VOA-Jerusalem)
Terrorists in southern Lebanon have wounded three Israeli soldiers, one allied militiaman, and a UN peacekeeper. Hizbullah guerrillas are stepping up rocket and artillery attacks against positions manned by Israeli soldiers and their militia allies in southern Lebanon.
Mortars and rockets fell on military outposts, injuring Israeli
soldiers and a fighter for the Israeli-allied South Lebanon Army
(SLA). A UN peacekeeper from Fiji was also wounded. Israel
retaliated for the attacks with warplanes and artillery pounding
suspected guerrilla hideouts. Lebanese security officials in the
port city of Tyre say at least one civilian was injured in heavy
Israeli shelling and air strikes.
Iranian-backed gunmen are fighting a war of attrition against
Israel, which maintains a nine-mile-wide buffer zone in southern
Lebanon to protect against cross-border attacks. The Israeli
government has promised to withdraw its forces from southern
Lebanon by July.
Sex Slaves Brought into Israel
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
Israel's immigration minister is demanding immediate action to stop the international trafficking of women to the Jewish state to work as prostitutes. Her call follows release of a report, Thursday, by the human-rights group Amnesty International, which says the Israeli government is compounding the abuse of these women by treating them as violators of immigration laws, rather than victims.
The report says Israel is an easy target for Russian-based crime gangs, which have used the influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union as a cover for sneaking in an estimated 10,000 prostitutes in the past 10 years.
According to the report, some women come knowingly, while others are kidnapped or lured to Israel under false pretenses by the promise of legitimate jobs. Once here, the men who control the women -- their pimps -- take away their passports and confine them in apartment brothels, where they are forced by the threat of physical violence to work as sex slaves.
Such practices are illegal in Israel, but according to the Amnesty report, government agencies, including the police, have so far failed to investigate or prevent such abuses.
Nor have those responsible been brought to trial, even though it is against the law for a pimp to live off the earnings of a prostitute. Instead, the women themselves are arrested, jailed and then eventually deported, while the pimps go unpunished.
One of the authors of the Amnesty International report is Israeli Yael Weisz-Rind. "There is trafficking, organized trafficking of women into Israel into the sex industry, which is accompanied with a grave human-rights violation towards those women: locking them in apartments, raping them, torturing them, forcing them to work in prostitution. And the different government agencies, including the police, does not work efficiently to end this grave human-rights violation."
Israel's Minister of Immigrant Absorption, Yuli Tamir, says it is high time that the police are ordered to take action to halt the trafficking of women into the sex trade.
"The police should be the first ones to try and find out where these women are held, and first of all set these women free, send them back to their home countries and make sure that no other women will be brought into Israel."
Amnesty says that in many instances, the women were literally bought and sold, often in auctions where bidders "purchased" them for large sums of money.
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