Posted on 05/06/2003 1:07:50 AM PDT by sarcasm
JERUSALEM — Foreign activists in the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group whose members included Rachael Corrie, acknowledged yesterday they had had tea with two Britons involved in last week's suicide bombing, but said they had seen no hint of their guests' violent plans.
Corrie, 23, a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, was crushed to death in March as she fell while trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer from destroying a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip.
Although the Israeli government has not tried to link the bombers to the activist group, it said the involvement of foreigners in the bombing makes it even more determined to keep all foreign activists out of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
One of the Britons, Asif Hanif, 21, blew himself up in a Tel Aviv bar early Wednesday, killing a waitress and two musicians in the first suicide attack carried out by a foreigner during 31 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The second man, Omar Khan Sharif, 27, fled when his bomb failed to detonate. He remains at large.
On April 25, Sharif and Hanif toured the Gaza Strip, including the Rafah refugee camp. At one point, they met with members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led group that sends foreign volunteers to serve as buffers between Israeli troops and Palestinian civilians during confrontations.
The two Britons, along with 15 other people, visited a Rafah apartment rented by the group, Raphael Cohen, an ISM member from Britain, said at a news conference yesterday. "Our group ... offered all of them tea," he said.
Cohen said he asked the two men who they were and to which organization they belonged. "They answered that they weren't with any particular organization," said Cohen, who described the men as quiet.
After 15 minutes of drinking tea, he said, the group attended a memorial service for Corrie. Cohen said they spent only a few minutes at the spot where Corrie was killed before ISM members and the visitors went their separate ways.
An ISM spokeswoman, Huwaida Arraf, said Hanif and Sharif had no contact with the group other than the tea.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Sunday that Hanif and Sharif had entered Israel several weeks ago from Jordan, carrying bombs inside a copy of the Quran, the Muslim holy book. He said they apparently were recruited by a Syrian-based terrorist group while studying Arabic in Damascus, Syria's capital.
In recent days, Israeli officials have said they intend to be even stricter about letting activists into the country.
"We are at a time of war and they are going into enemy territory," said Tova Ellinson, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry.
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