Among the reasons however that there is not much more international protest against these Israelis practices is that Arafat's "Authority" and the Arab "client regimes" use all kinds of similar tactics to threaten their own writers and intellectuals, and to arrest and torture politically active persons. Yesterday's actions reported from Jordan are just the tip of the iceberg. There is today severe repression and fear widespread among Palestinian intellectuals and writers living under both the "Palestinian Authority" on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Hashemite Regime which, in tandem with the U.S. and Israel, controls the East Bank of former Palestine.

Not since the first Intifada has the government been so suspicious of Arab writers now being hauled in for questioning.

By Jalal Bana and Ori Nir

[Ha'aretz - May 10, 2001]: The Shin Bet has been hauling in Israeli Arab authors, journalists, publishers, and even poets for "clarification and explanatory conversations" - asking them questions about their writings. Some of those questioned say they were warned not to write anything that could be construed as incitement.

The writers regard the questioning as an attack on their freedom of expression and an attempt to intimidate them. The Prime Minister's Office confirms writers have been questioned because of "extremist-nationalist" writing.

For many years there have been very few cases of security services intervening in the writing of Israeli Arabs. Now, there has not been such an intensive campaign against them since the 1980s, during the first Intifada when the government worried that writing it regarded as "incitement" would pull the Palestinian violence in the territories across into Israel proper.

In the last month, Shin Bet has questioned the three publishers of Saut al Halk u'al-Huriya, published by the northern faction of the Islamic movement, poet-columnist Abdel Hakim Masalha, and veteran journalist Muhamad Ali Taha.

Taha, chairman of the Israeli Arab Writers Union, was chosen by the Supreme Israeli Arab Monitoring Committee to serve as the head of the Naqba committee three years ago. He usually writes about Palestinian nationalist affairs. A month ago, while hosting his friend former justice minister Yossi Beilin, he was served a warrant ordering him to appear at the Misgav police station.

There, he was questioned by two Shin Bet officers who identified themselves as Yarden and Yaniv. They questioned him mostly about his contacts with people in the Palestinian Authority and his role organizing a joint rally by Israeli Arab and Palestinian intellectuals last March.

Taha said that Yarden told him he was forbidden to enter PA-controlled areas, and warned him about incitement in his articles and speeches. According to Taha, his interrogators also demanded that he "be careful" in his writing because of its impact on the Israeli Arab community.

The interrogators, said Taha, told him they "know everything" about him and that they have "a large file" on him. They quoted from his poetry and other publications. "They did a doctorate on my my writing before calling me in," says Taha, but he adds that he's known more difficult times. In the mid-'80s, a book of his poetry was banned, since the authorities claimed it was incitement. It eventually came out due to pressure from human rights organizations and Jewish intellectuals.

But it's not only famous, veteran writers whose work is being analyzed by the Shin Bet. Abdel Hakim Masalha from Kfar Kara, who makes his living selling ads in the local Arabic-language press and as a newspaper distributor, took up poetry after the start of the October riots, which lit a warning lamp at the Shin Bet.

Forty years old, he was questioned last week in the Hadera police station. "A Shin Bet interrogator told me 'your poetry is dangerous' and they told me 'we're following everything you write.'" They told him to tone down his writing because "readers, especially the young among them, could understand the writing as incitement."

Masalha began writing after the start of the rioting, and he usually eulogizes the fallen, describing their mothers' suffering. His two best known poems are about Asil Asala, the high schooler killed during rioting in Arabe, presumably by Border Patrol bullets, and Muhamad al-Dura, the youngster shot dead in his father's arms during a fire fight at the Erez junction early in the Intifada. In other poems Masalha mentions the Sabra and Chatilla massacres and anti-Arab rhetoric of Shas Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

The Prime Minister's Office said that Masalha was indeed questioned on May 2, "about nationalist poetry published in Saut al Halk." That paper's publishers have also been questioned. One, Ali Salah, was questioned two months ago in the Beit Shean police station when he returned from a business trip to Jordan. Some CDs of Islamic music were confiscated, and later returned. A month ago he was called in again by the Shin Bet and questioned for four hours, he says.

The questioning was mostly about his contacts with "hostile Islamic organizations" and the reasons for his frequent trips to Jordan, Europe and the PA. Salah owns an advertising agency and is a singer in a band. He says his trips were only for business purposes.

The PMO says that Salah was questioned "due to suspicion about contacts with illegal hostile elements overseas and in Israel." As for the apparent increase in the number of Arab intellectuals under Shin Bet surveillance, the PMO said that the security service "does not give out information about its operations.

JENIN, West Bank (Reuters - 12 May) - Israeli helicopter gunships rocketed the car of a Palestinian intelligence officer in the West Bank on Saturday, killing two people and wounding 16 others.

Palestinian officials said it was a deliberate assassination attempt.

Abdel-Karim Oweis, the intelligence officer who Palestinian security officials believe was the target of the Israeli attack, was lightly wounded, hospital officials said.

They said Mo'tassem al-Sabbah, an activist with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction who was in the car, and Allam Jaloudi, a police officer near the vehicle at the time of the strike, were killed.

Sixteen others were wounded, the hospital officials said.

A Reuters correspondent at the scene said four Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at Oweis's car. Bloodstains and the car's mangled remains were spread across the road.

Witnesses said the first projectile hit the road near the car, leaving a large crater. One passenger managed to flee and a second missile that was aimed at him hit a private house nearby.

"Israel attempted to assassinate today an officer in the Palestinian intelligence apparatus, Abdel-Karim Oweis, by firing missiles from helicopters on his car," Tawfiq al-Tirawi, the head of Palestinian intelligence in the West Bank, told Reuters.

Israel denies it has a policy of assassination but has killed more than 30 Palestinians it suspected of carrying out attacks against its civilians and soldiers since the start of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in September.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah, vowed to avenge Sabbah's killing.

Israeli media reported that Sabbah and Oweis were responsible for several shooting attacks against Israelis and for planting bombs in the West Bank. It said they were planning to carry out mortar bomb attacks against Jewish settlements.

In separate violence, the Israeli army said Palestinians fired six mortar bombs on Saturday at two Jewish settlements in Gaza, lightly wounding one person. Late on Friday, Israeli tanks shelled Gaza after a mortar bomb attack on a Jewish settlement.

The helicopter strike was the latest violence in a week of

attacks that has included the killing of a four-month-old Palestinian baby and the stoning to death of two Israeli teenagers who lived in a West Bank Jewish settlement.

The missile strike came hours after President Bush called a new cycle of Middle East killings "abhorrent."

"The death in the Middle East is abhorrent, and our nation weeps when people lose their lives," Bush told a news conference on Friday. "And what we must do is work hard to break the cycle of violence."

"It's going to be very difficult for us to be able to bring people to the peace table so long as there is violence," he added.

Israeli troops shot dead a stone-throwing Palestinian teenager in Gaza on Friday and wounded at least two dozen more in various clashes and gun battles in the West Bank and Gaza where a Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation has raged.

Earlier, Israeli tanks and bulldozers rumbled as far as 800 yards into the Palestinian-controlled town of Deir al-Balah in Gaza, leveling three houses and a Palestinian police post after a grenade attack hurt two soldiers.

Israel has said it will continue incursions into Palestinian areas and other forms of retaliation for attacks on Israeli targets, despite criticism from the United States.

At least 412 Palestinians, 79 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the start of the Palestinian revolt.

"The Palestinian leadership considers this unjustified and provocative escalation a blatant call for comprehensive struggle that would affect the entire region," a Palestinian cabinet statement said. It called for international intervention.

Tension is unlikely to drop as Palestinians prepare for marches on May 15, the day they mark the creation of Israel in 1948 on parts of what had been British mandate Palestine. They remember Israel's birth as the Nakba, or the great catastrophe.

At the United Nations, three Arab ambassadors met U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his special Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, on Friday.

They discussed "the need to focus on what urgent steps should be taken," U.N. officials said without elaborating.

The envoys from Tunisia, the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority have been pushing for a U.N. observer protection force in the West Bank and Gaza.

The United States has vetoed such a proposal in the 15-nation Security Council and its envoys have said there has been no change of policy.