Human rights violations and war crimes seen so blatantly across the world in April of this year continue on a daily basis in Jenin. Yesterday, with the casual killings that marked it, was not an unusual day in Jenin. It has become a potentially suicidal act to engage in the most basic acts of survival. The Israeli Occupation Forces engage again and again in a shoot-to-kill policy without regard as to whether its targets are civilians or armed fighters. Israelis have been shown in April that they can get away with a massacre, and that all the international condemnation in the world cannot get one ambulance in to evacuate a wounded person.

Thus the lack of accountability on Israel's part has become bolder as the events witnessed yesterday become almost standard. These are not military campaigns. They are acts of terror designed to humiliate, brutalise, and bully Palestinians into subjugation. They are being denied not only the right to resist, but to exist.

Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish national who lives in Jenin Refugee Camp and has been working in solidarity with the Palestinian community in Jenin since March 2001. Her activities include providing moral support and physical protection to children as well as adults in homes, schools, streets -- where children are especially vulnerable, ambulances and other venues where the Israeli Army poses a threat to people's lives. Dr. Annie Higgins is an Arabic and Arabic literature lecturer at the University of Chicago and is a former recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. She is currently in Jenin.

(Please continue...)