Report: IOF troops carried out 36 incursions in W. Bank during one week

NABLUS, (PIC)-- The Palestinian center for human rights revealed in its weekly report that the IOF troops carried out during a one-week period at least 36 incursions in most of the West Bank cities, villages and refugee camps during which they kidnapped 26 Palestinian citizens and committed human rights abuses. During the reporting period, from 19 to 25 of March, the IOF troops kidnapped four Palestinian lawmakers and other numbers of leaders affiliated with Hamas, according to the center. The center strongly denounced the kidnappings, stressing that such mass punishment is banned by article 33 of the fourth Geneva convention on the protection of civilian individuals in time of war. The IOF troops also, during this period, continued to destroy and bulldoze more Palestinian lands in the West Bank for the expansion of the apartheid wall especially in the villages of Wadi Al-Rasha and Ras Tayra, south of Qalqilya. The IOF used as usual excessive force against Palestinian and foreign activists participating in peaceful anti-wall protests which resulted in eight injuries and dozens of suffocation cases among the protesters. The report also pointed out that the IOF troops carried out a limited incursion into the Gaza Strip on March 22 specifically in the Farrahin neighborhood, east of Khan Younis, and bulldozed agricultural lands, adding that the Israeli navy kidnapped during the reporting period nine Palestinian fishermen in Gaza waters. In a new development, the Israeli war ministry announced that it would carry out its biggest-ever war drill in all Palestinian occupied lands in anticipation of any massive missile attacks. Matan Vilnai, the deputy war minister, said that the goal of the drill is to get all Israelis introduced to the culture of emergency as if a war is about to break out tomorrow. The Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said Friday that the Israeli security apparatuses would ratify during this week this drill called "turning point" which simulates attacks on Israel. In another context, Moshe Arens, a former Israeli minister, said that the war on Gaza had not achieved its objectives, stressing that war minister Ehud Barak failed to confront Hamas and stop its rocket attacks. In an article published in the Haaretz newspaper, Arenz underlined that the Israeli military operation against Gaza failed to put an end to rocket fire and to get captive soldier Gilad Shalit released and above all Israel paid dearly when it provoked the international public opinion against it as a result of the massive destruction it caused in Gaza.