OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 January 2004 — Israel was set to expel yesterday a Swedish MP arrested during a protest against the Jewish state’s controversial barrier in the West Bank, as fresh clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.
Gustav Fridolin was arrested Wednesday by Israeli troops together with a dozen other protesters in the West Bank village of Budrus, north of Ramallah. The young Swedish lawmaker, who claimed he was beaten during his arrest, did not lodge an appeal with Israel’s Supreme Court to prevent the expulsion, and was due to leave the country last night.
He is accused of having penetrated a closed military zone. Expulsion orders were also handed to three other foreign peace activists arrested in Budrus on Wednesday — another Swede and two Americans — who decided to use their right to appeal the order, said a spokesman for the International Solidarity Movement.
Israeli border police fired tear gas grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets yesterday at a group of stone-throwing Palestinian youths in Budrus trying to oppose the construction of the barrier, an AFP correspondent said. No injuries were reported.
Israeli Army, meanwhile, said it was lifting its blockade on the encircled West Bank city of Jenin as an Egyptian envoy called on the Jewish state to do more to help revive Middle East peace talks.
Jenin has been surrounded for much of a three-year-old conflict. The latest closure was imposed after a truce declared by Palestinian factions collapsed amid further violence in August and forced negotiations to a halt.
The army said the removal of the closure was “in keeping with assessments of the security situation”. Israeli soldiers at checkpoints around the city, scene of heavy fighting in April 2002, said that roadblocks and tanks would be gone by this morning.
After meeting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at his shell-battered headquarters in the West Bank, an Egyptian mediator said he felt encouraged by the former guerrilla leader and now Israel needed to do more.
“We hope that Israel should exert parallel efforts to those exerted by the Palestinian Authority, by us and by the international community,” Osama El-Baz, political adviser to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, told reporters.
