AMY GOODMAN: And now we go to the Occupied Territories and Israel. Backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, Israeli troops carried out assault raids on two densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank today. This came just hours after Ariel Sharon’s government said it was intensifying its campaign in the Occupied Territories. Scores of Palestinians have been killed in what are now regular assaults on refugee camps. More than a dozen Israeli tanks and troops tore through the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. This weekend, ground troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships moved from house to house in the Jenin and Balata camps. Despite Israeli claims to be hunting down what it calls militants or terrorists, reports from the camps say the assaults have indiscriminately killed civilians, including children. Refugees say 20 Palestinians have been held hostage in the Balata camp by the Israeli army in one building for 10 days. Neither the United Nations nor the International Committee of the Red Cross have been able to reach the building.

Early today, a lone Palestinian sniper armed with an antiquated rifle opened fire on an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank, killing 10 people, seven of them soldiers. On Saturday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in an ultra-Orthodox West Jerusalem neighborhood as Jewish residents poured out to celebrate a bar mitzvah. Nine people were killed.

We go now to the West Bank and to Jerusalem. Caoimhe Butterly is with, an activist with International Solidarity Action in the Balata refugee camp. And we’re joined by Michel Warschawski. He’s an Israeli peace activist, journalist and former director of the Alternative Information Center, a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization.

Michel Warschawski, let’s begin with you. Can you describe the situation where you are, in Jerusalem?

MICHEL WARSCHAWSKI: What is taking place is a huge use of violence by the Israeli occupation forces. Just now we heard in the radio that an ambulance was shot in a checkpoint, and a doctor and apparently more people were killed. And there are two cars that are bombed in Ramallah only in the last hour, and the whole family killed. The army was claiming that it was a mistake. There is no limit anymore to the use of violence by the Israeli army, the Israeli government, which obviously — and everyone knows it in Israel, including in the government — will provoke retaliations from the Palestinians. And Hamas already announced that they will retaliate for the assassination of the family in Ramallah.

AMY GOODMAN: Caoimhe Butterly, from your vantage point in Balata, can you describe the situation there now?

CAOIMHE BUTTERLY: [inaudible] past few days [inaudible] families, and we did a more sort of comprehensive tour of the area today. There was a curfew, effectively, for about three days, so people really couldn’t get out of their houses to assess the sort of overall damage. But particularly, I mean, we’ve toured this morning, and there really isn’t a house that hasn’t been trashed in the Balata camp. There were a series of beatings as the sort of searches of the houses took place, ostensibly looking for weapons. But as we’ve seen, it’s just been a desecration, really, I mean, houses sort of trashed, people beaten in the process. I spoke to a family who was held for four days in a room, locked in, about 12 of them, without any food or water, without access to a toilet. And when they came out of their house, they saw just wedding pictures sort of torn up, and Stars of Davids painted everywhere. And, I mean, there’s just obscene language basically painted everywhere. And, I mean, again, it’s relatively minor to the more intense sort of form of violence here, which, I mean, we — I’ve come to you in the funeral procession today of four young men who were shot in the last few days. But it’s been quite indiscriminate. I mean, I visited a series of women in hospital, you know, who were shot or hit by shrapnel. There’s been children killed. It’s just — it’s a very bad situation.

AMY GOODMAN: What are people calling for in the Balata refugee camp right now?

CAOIMHE BUTTERLY: I think everybody is still very much in a state of shock. People are very, very angry. And the older people are definitely — I mean, they’re calling for just to be regarded as human beings, not to be treated as — I don’t know. I lived in Africa for a few years, and just touring around here, it’s like apartheid South Africa, you know, just such a blatant racism towards a group of people and such a blatant form of collective punishment. People are calling for, basically, the things that they’ve been calling for for years, but people are very angry. And I’ve spoken to a number of young people today, you know, who, despite — I mean, the food situation is very bad here, but they were saying, you know, “We don’t need food. We need guns,” and not necessarily — like, they say, you know, “We recognize the humanity of Israelis,” but the people who came in here were not human. I mean, they treated them like animals. And there’s very much a feeling, you know, that they are completely defenseless, you know, that no matter what they do, they’ll be labeled terrorists, whether they live in peace or whether they — or whether the series of suicide bombs sort of continues. You know, this is really in a no-win situation. And Balata particularly, I mean, it’s one of the poorest areas, or one of the poorest refugee camps in Palestine, because the people really have so, so very little, and the little that they have was desecrated in the last few days. But, I mean, I visited a series of families today whose children are still in shock. I mean, they’re just lying, shaking, because they were awoken from the night because their parents were beaten in front of them. There was a 15-year-old girl who, when she tried to come to her father’s defense, as he was beaten, was shot in the head. She’s in critical condition. Yeah, it’s bad, bad, bad business.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Michel Warschawski, where you are, what people are calling for right now in Jerusalem?

MICHEL WARSCHAWSKI: The Israelis are calling for revenge for the Israelis who have been killed in the recent operations in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem and in the Occupied Territories. Only a minority is calling to end immediately occupation, because the occupation is the source of all this violence. And it has been proven that there will be no military way to stop the resistance of the Palestinians, despite the huge price they have to pay. They are determined to resist and to expel the Israeli army from the Occupied Territories.

AMY GOODMAN: Michel Warschawski, Israeli peace activist, journalist and former director of the Alternative Information Center, a joint Palestinian Israeli organization, speaking to us from Jerusalem, and Caoimhe Butterly, activist with International Solidarity Action in Balata refugee camp in the West Bank.

You are listening to Democracy Now! When we come back, we turn to the great Indian writer Arundhati Roy, speaking to us from New Delhi. Stay with us.