11:45) Israelis reopen desert camp for Palestinian prisoners
By Steve Weizman, The Associated Press


JERUSALEM - Israel has reopened a harsh desert detention camp to hold some of the thousands of Palestinians it has rounded up during its 19-day sweep through Palestinian towns and refugee camps, an Israeli military official said today, confirming reports by a number of human rights organizations.

Asked about the camp, the army declined to comment, which held prisoners detained throughout the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987-93.

In house-to-house searches that accompanied military incursions into the West Bank since March 29, the Israeli military says it has captured many suspected leaders of Palestinian uprising.

The latest, taken from his hideout in the town of Ramallah on Monday, was political and militia leader Marwan Barghouti, the highest-ranking grassroots activist in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

Elite IDF units backed by armor and infantry surrounded the house in Ramallah where he and his cousin, Ahmed, were hiding. Both men, as well as several others who were inside, surrendered peacefully.

To read more about the operation, A< HREF="http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/04/16/News/News.47050.html">click here.

Israel Radio said Barghouti was being interrogated at Jerusalem police headquarters.

Once touted as a possible successor to Arafat,
Barghouti became the symbol of armed struggle against Israel.

To read more about the Fatah leader,click here.

The IDF Spokesman said that as of Monday morning, the army had arrested 4,258 Palestinians in an operation codenamed 'Defensive Shield.' Of those, 387 were previously known terror suspects, the army said.

Suspicions against others emerged during interrogation and altogether about 1,200 men would be kept in custody, Israeli security sources said.

The military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the army has started releasing the remainder of the detainees, but they were being freed in small groups and the process would take some time.

Security sources said most other detainees were being held at an army camp near Ramallah and several hundred had been transferred to Ketziot, a tent camp in a remote part of southern Israel's Negev desert, a few kilometers (miles) from the Egyptian border.

The military prison camp is known to Palestinians as "Ansar II" after the Ansar prison run by Israel during its military occupation of south Lebanon, Ketziot was first used to house Palestinians shortly after the December 1987 outbreak of the previous uprising.

At one time, 3,500 prisoners were incarcerated there in conditions they described as searing heat by day and bone-chilling cold by night, with scorpions and biting insects tormenting them constantly. The last recorded prisoners at Ketziot were released in 1996 as part of Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.

In other military news, three of the air force's helicopters were hit by ground fire in the past few weeks, OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Dan Halutz was quoted as saying.

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