AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, Resistance Radio. I’m Amy Goodman.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met with U.S. State Department official William Burns on Monday to discuss the standoff there and at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The U.S. envoy met Arafat at his compound, where about 300 aides, security guards and foreigners have been confined to a few rooms by Israeli troops since late March. Israel is demanding the Palestinians hand over five suspects in October’s assassination of the Israeli transportation minister — rather, the Israeli tourism minister, as well as the alleged mastermind of a large arms shipment to the Palestinian Authority intercepted by Israel. Arafat has refused, saying the six will face trial in Palestinian courts. There’s growing speculation that Israeli forces might try to break in and seize the wanted men.

Even as they met, an Israeli bulldozer destroyed several cars parked outside and began building a rampart, this according to foreign activists in the compound.

On Sunday, a group of about 30 international activists gathered at the hospital in Ramallah to plan a march to the presidential compound, as word spread that a siege was imminent. By staging a series of diversions, the activists managed to get a group of six activists inside Yasser Arafat’s compound. Kevin Skvorak is inside the compound, one of those who got in.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

KEVIN SKVORAK: Yeah, hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us where you are exactly?

KEVIN SKVORAK: I’m in a room looking out the — I believe it’s the east side of the compound. And about 30 feet away is some of the buildings in the rest of the compound that have been occupied by soldiers. I don’t know the layout, though, just from from moving around the few rooms we can move inside. And most of the windows are closed, so — you know, I kind of know the layout inside, but it’s kind of hard to get a sense of what the entire complex looks like outside, since we don’t have access to it all.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you explain why you did go in this weekend?

KEVIN SKVORAK: Because of what you suggested. There was some anticipation that there was going to be some assaults by Sharon. There’s a lot of — there was some talk by some of the missions or the consular to the French and to other nationals here that they need to move now. There was some concern, and people interpreted this as if there might be an action coming. All of the — when Powell and Burns and everyone has come, I mean, the discussions inside here with Arafat, in the news that we get, is that they’re not very helpful, that they’re a waste of time, and there’s no proposals on the table that they’re being offered. So, you know, it’s really a standoff. And the Israelis aren’t really offering any suggestions other than what you’ve said, that they need to turn these people over unconditionally.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you met with Yasser Arafat?

KEVIN SKVORAK: Yes, he’s come and visited with us a couple of times, and met him and passed him in the hallway and so forth. And we passed a letter, myself and Rebecca, the two Americans here, to William Burns yesterday when he was here, and sort of, you know, let them know that there was a couple of Americans here, not that — I don’t know how much difference it makes, but a lot of the other internationals were concerned that we made our presence known as Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: Where are you from?

KEVIN SKVORAK: I’m from Brooklyn.

AMY GOODMAN: And why did you go to the Occupied Territories?

KEVIN SKVORAK: Well, I got here a month ago with many of the other ISM activists who came and spent time in Bethlehem, or Bethlehem area, in [inaudible] and Beit Jala, sort of, you know, the first incident where they fired and wounded some of the folks. And since then, I’ve been spending time and went up to Jenin camp for several days and got in there early on last week and saw some of that. It seemed an opportunity to do something effective. I mean, people do protests at home. People are, you know, organizing boycotts and hopefully student campaigns and disinvestment campaigns, but it seemed like an opportunity to use some of the skills and experiences we have in doing protests and activist work here, you know, here in a direct way, so it sounded pretty exciting.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the phone by Georgina Reeves with the Independent Media Center of Palestine. She’s in Bethlehem, watching yesterday on television as sound grenades engulfed the area around the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on the eve of talks between the Israeli army and a team of Palestinian negotiators about the standoff with hundreds of people still inside the church. Georgina Reeves, you’ve just come from a news conference. What happened there?

GEORGINA REEVES: Yes, well, some of the Palestinian negotiators who were meeting today at the Peace Center in Manger Square with Israeli representatives came to the Bethlehem Hotel to give a brief press conference about what has happened. They stated that the negotiations — they didn’t give a lot of information. They said that the negotiations were positive. They’re meeting again tonight at 6:00 local time and to continue with the negotiations, and they seem hopeful that there will be some resolution by the end of tonight. But one of the things they stressed was there’s absolutely no negotiation for the Palestinians inside who are accused of either terrorism or gunmen, whatever. They are not going to be exiled. They will not accept any form of deportation for any of the people inside the church. So we’re actually waiting now for the next couple of hours to pass until they have the next meeting to see what comes from that.

AMY GOODMAN: And what has been the scene over the last 24 hours outside the Church of the Nativity, as we watched these stun grenades on TV going off yesterday?

GEORGINA REEVES: Well, it’s been a pattern. That is a usual occurrence when it starts getting dark. There’s different opinions as to the severity of the attack. Some people have said that the Israelis were actually making a full assault against the church in an attempt to gain access, but were repelled. Obviously, I wasn’t there, so I can’t confirm that is accurate. But that has come from sources inside the church that we’ve been speaking to. But it’s also a pattern of the kind of the breaking down the psychology and the mentality of the people inside by continuing with assaults, using sound, using sound grenades, shooting, etc., to try and encourage them to come out and to try and break the kind of morale of people inside.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the phone by Adam Keller. He’s a spokesperson for Gush Shalom, which is an Israeli peace group. And he’s dealing with a story that my colleague Robert Knight of Pacifica station WBAI brought to my attention about Microsoft. It declares on its website, “We’re serious about making the world a better place.” And one of the things that it has recently done is put up billboards around Tel Aviv that say, “From the depth of our heart — thanks to the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Adam Keller, can you talk about Gush Shalom’s response?

ADAM KELLER: Yes. Well, I have to give a little bit of the context. In fact, this slogan is not only of Microsoft. It is the result of a government-sponsored patriotic drive, you could say. The government is encouraging all kinds of institutions and business corporations to put up signs or stickers or advertisements with this slogan in various variations and always with the same, the Israeli national flag. And Microsoft, I suppose it was the Israeli Microsoft branch took it up, like other big corporations in Israel who are now jumping on the patriotic bandwagon, and they have put up these signs.

And we felt that that there is a discrepancy between the claims of Microsoft to be committed to globalization, however much we might not like the capitalist globalization, but still the concept of open borders, free flow of goods and thought and economics and so on is not very compatible with very narrow-minded nationalism and militarism and support for the kind of thing which Sharon is doing at this moment against the Palestinians. So we sent an email to Bill Gates via various Microsoft addresses which we found on the internet and pointed out this discrepancy to Bill Gates. I don’t know if it got actually to him or to some officials of Microsoft. In fact, we never got any answer directly from Microsoft, not even a kind of polite statement like, “We got your message, and it is under consideration.” Absolutely nothing.

But the fact is that yesterday, some of our people saw at least two of the signs have come down in the Tel Aviv area, were not there anymore. They were very normal signs, kind of several meters long. They were just not there. And then, late at night, we got a message which told the interesting story that the Microsoft branch in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates was under a very heavy attack in these countries, of course, for Microsoft supporting the Israeli army attacking the Palestinians, and that these branches have passed on their complaint to the center of Microsoft. And there was a Microsoft representative who came to a technological exhibition in Riyadh. And there he said that these signs have come down and that it was a mistake, and it is because the different branches of Microsoft in different countries have autonomy, but this should not have happened. And kind of very, very — it must have been very embarrassing for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Why does it bother you so much?

ADAM KELLER: Now, it bothers me. This whole patriotic campaign is very much bothering me. There is a kind of drummed-up campaign to support what the army is doing against the Palestinians, hailing it as a big war against terrorism and so on. In fact, I think that it is very much modeled on what was in the United States in the immediate aftermath of September 11, including very much national flags, which you see everywhere. It happened to be — last week happened to be the Israeli Independence Day, but there were many more flags than usual on Independence Day in this country.

And so, we could not — we are not in a position to go, for example, to the Israeli cellphone company, which also put up these kind of big patriotic signs. We told them, “Don’t do it. Then they will say, “Why not? We are for the army fighting terrorism.” But we thought that when the Israeli Microsoft did it, we could find a weak spot by sort of coming between the Israeli branch and their international backers, the international center, and this way, at least, getting rid of at least one ingredient of this patriotic campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, we just had as our first guest Kevin Skvorak, who is one of two Americans who just got into the Yasser Arafat compound. What do you think of this action of International Solidarity Movement activists going into the compound in Ramallah?

ADAM KELLER: Yeah, I’m very much for it. Actually, I and several of my friends, some 15 of us altogether, we were in Ramallah yesterday morning demonstrating in front of the same compound. We did not succeed to get in. I think that the army was a little bit more alert after these six Americans got in. I’m really very full of admiration for their courage and determination. We just got about 100 meters from the compound, and then we were stopped by quite a lot of soldiers with tanks and armored personnel carriers. And we were raising signs, in English and Hebrew and Arabic, saying, “Down with the occupation! Stop Sharon’s war crimes!” and also “Arafat is our partner.” And we had made a special sign that was only in Hebrew, “Soldiers, go home. Better refuse. Military prison is better than occupation duty.” You know that there are at this moment 39 Israeli reserve and conscript soldiers imprisoned for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories.

And we are going to have a big march and rally in Tel Aviv on the night of 27th. We hope for at least 5,000, and better for 10,000, and with the same slogans, a kind of coalition of peace movements which was formed recently, it’s called the Jewish-Arab Coalition Against the Occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you heard about the protests in the United States, first the rally of nearly 100,000 for the Israeli state, that was last week, and then this past weekend of also nearly 100,000 people who were rallying around a number of issues, including against what the Israeli military is doing in the Occupied Territories?

ADAM KELLER: Yes, it was reported. Of course, I would not call it pro-Israel rally, because I think it was against the pro-interests of Israel. I would say pro-Sharon rally, was very much very extensively reported, of course. They want to try to make very much of it and present it as counterbalance for the very many anti-demonstrations which have been taking place all over the world.

And also, the other rally was — it was mentioned in the news. There were some pictures. But they were trying to claim that it was much smaller. They didn’t say that it was of the same size. And also they tried to emphasize the present participation of Arab Americans, Palestinian Americans to say so. Of course, it is all “the Arabs are against us, and the Arabs in the United States are also against us. So what is new about it?” By the way, they do the same, by the way, in demonstrations here also. When there are demonstrations of Jews and Arabs together, they always try to emphasize the Arab participants, and they deemphasize the Jewish participants.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much, Adam Keller, for joining us, of Gush Shalom, speaking to us from Israel. You are listening to Democracy Now! When we come back, a discussion about the history of Israel and Zionism. We’ll be back in a minute.