Occupied Jerusalem: 21 October, 2002 (IAP News)

The Israeli occupation army has resumed its draconian measures against Palestinian civilians in the northern part of the West Bank despite relative calm there.

Palestinian sources said Israeli tanks rolled back into the Palestinian town of Qalqilya Monday, placing the city under an open-ended hermetic curfew.

Local sources in the city, reached by telephone, said Israeli soldiers mounting armored personnel carriers were firing heavily into the air and occasionally on buildings and residential homes.

The sources said the purpose of the rabid firing was to terrorize civilians and especially to prevent school children from going to their schools.

Israeli soldiers reportedly threatened via loudspeakers to shoot and kill any Palestinian stepping outside his or her home.

Much of the West Bank has been under intermittent curfew for the past six months.

The Israeli army claims the harsh measure is needed to suppress Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid.

However, most Palestinians and human rights groups argue that the real motive behind the collective house arrest is to make ordinary life unbearable for most Palestinians so that many Palestinians would be forced to leave their ancestral homeland, and thus bring about a mass ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.