"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

Fayyad calls on Palestinians to defy Israeli army

NABLUS, West Bank-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad called on Palestinians on Thursday to defy an Israeli army attempt to shut down a major commercial centre in Nablus.In a striking intervention in an affair that Israel says is aimed at disrupting funding for Fayyad's Islamist opponents in Hamas, the Western-backed premier visited the modern complex which rises above the centre of the West Bank city and urged businesses to reopen there despite an Israeli raid on Tuesday."Shopkeepers are invited to open their stores and ignore the Israeli decision," Fayyad said, after soldiers who searched the building ordered it closed on the grounds its owners had passed funds to Hamas. "The Israeli army orders and decisions are not valid ... We will deal with them as if they don't exist."Fayyad, a former World Bank economist, was appointed by President Mahmoud Abbas a year ago after Hamas, which ran the previous, elected government seized control of the Gaza Strip in fighting with forces from Abbas's secular Fatah movement. The United States and its allies see Fayyad's efforts to improve Palestinian forces' ability to curb anti-Israel militants and his declared focus on promoting economic growth as key contributions to a peace process relaunched in November.Since his appointment, Fayyad has been increasingly critical of Israel's failure to ease restrictions on movement in the occupied West Bank or to remove Jewish settlements scattered across the territory, both factors he says hobble its economy.Nablus has been a focus of complaints that Israeli forces are undermining Palestinian security efforts by raiding into a major city that is, in principle, under Palestinian control and are stifling commerce by ringing the city with roadblocks.
SETTLEMENT COMPLAINTS
Earlier, Fayyad visited the town of Nilin, which Israeli troops sealed off and placed under curfew for several days this week after protests, occasionally violent, against continuing work on walls and fences in the West Bank that Israel says are intended to prevent Palestinian attackers reaching its cities.
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