Israel Armed Forces

A senior U.N. representative expressed concern to Israeli defense and foreign office officials here Thursday over what he termed the "rather heavy-handed reaction" of security forces to protesting Palestinian refugees. Giorgio Giacomelli, commissioner-general of the U.N.

Boys gagging on tear gas lay sprawled in Yasser Arafat's driveway Friday. Behind the closed black gate of his compound, Arafat's guards sulked. About 200 feet away, Israeli soldiers in tanks and armored carriers seized positions, closer to Arafat than ever.

Israeli forces took control of the West Bank town of Tulkarm today, the governor said, marking the largest raid of a Palestinian town in 16 months of fighting. Hours earlier, thousands of Palestinians marched to protest Israel's blockade of their leader, Yasser Arafat. Izzedine Sharif, the Palestinian governor of Tulkarm, said tanks entered the town from all directions before dawn, as four helicopters flew above.

His headquarters is flanked by Israeli tanks. The road to his front door has been blocked by a mountain of dirt, courtesy of the Israeli army. His territory is sliced into bits. Day by day, Israel tightens the noose around Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Authority president, whom Israel holds responsible for attacks on its citizens, is virtually cut off from the outside world at his headquarters in Ramallah and is under an ever more stifling siege.

What began with a terse note tacked to a Tel Aviv University bulletin board has mushroomed into the most serious protest movement against the Israeli army's conduct in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 16 months of fighting with the Palestinians--and it is coming from soldiers themselves.

Israel on Sunday ordered its tanks to pull back from the headquarters of Yasser Arafat but refused to lift a travel ban that has trapped the Palestinian Authority president in the West Bank city of Ramallah for nearly three months. Palestinian officials reacted angrily to the "humiliating" Israeli decision and suspended recently renewed security contacts with Israel.

Twenty-four hours before he and nine other Israelis were shot dead by a Palestinian sniper, Lt. David Damelin telephoned his mother. He described his feelings of vulnerability stationed at a remote West Bank roadblock, the enemy unseen in surrounding hills. "We feel like sitting ducks," he told her.

Israel pulled its troops out of the West Bank city of Bethlehem and other Palestinian-controlled areas early today after Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met in an effort to achieve a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians. U.S. officials did not expect a cease-fire to be declared before Cheney's departure from Israel today. But the quickened pace of meetings between U.S. envoy Anthony C.

Israeli tanks with searchlights rumbled through darkened, near-deserted streets here late Thursday, tightening their hold on Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, and surrounding three refugee camps where Palestinian gunmen were barricaded behind sandbags and garbage bins.

For 28 days in October, Noam Kuzar sat in Military Prison No. 4. The bespectacled 19-year-old soldier had violated one of the most vaunted principles of the Israeli experience. He refused an army command--orders, in this case, to deploy in the West Bank. Since the start of Israel's deadly confrontation with Palestinian stone-throwers and gunmen three months ago, a small but growing number of Israeli soldiers is refusing to serve in the mostly Palestinian-ruled West Bank and Gaza Strip.