Saturday May 11, 2002 8:10 AM

The Guardian

JERUSALEM (AP) - When new foreigners arrive in the West Bank to demonstrate against Israel, their veteran colleagues quickly split them into two groups: those who need a lesson in how to cope with tear gas and those who need to learn who the Israelis and Palestinians are in the first place.

The small core of foreigners who have prominently protested Israel's offensive against Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank is a loose-knit group of volunteers, divided between those who have been interested in Palestinian rights for years and veteran globalization protesters who have discovered a new cause.

``It's a very fluid situation as far as who we have at any given time,'' said Tony Aschettino, a spokesman for the International Solidarity Movement, which coordinates many of the foreign protesters. ``We've gotten anyone from anarchists to communists to people who are Islamists.''

On Friday, 10 activists from the group refused to leave the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, delaying an end to a tense 39-day standoff and an Israeli troop withdrawal from a city that had been under curfew for more than five weeks.

After several hours, Israeli police in riot gear went inside and forced them out. All 10 activists, including four Americans, were being questioned by police and will be deported, according to police spokesman Rafi Yaffe.

The activists dashed into the church May 2 to bring food to the 123 Palestinians holed up inside, to describe conditions there and to act as human shields to prevent the Palestinians from being harmed.

``We felt that somebody had to do something, we knew how desperate people were,'' said Georgina Reeves, a spokeswoman for the group, who was not in the church.

The activists claimed clergy inside pushed and shoved them Friday before police removed them. But priests said they didn't know anything about the claims, and one accused the activists of desecrating the holy site by smoking and drinking alcohol.

One of those inside, Kristen Schurr, 33, from New York City, told The Associated Press earlier this week she was a veteran of protests for Palestinian rights who tried several times to get into the church before her successful run.

``I've been following the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1987, the first intefadeh,'' she said.

But many others knew little of the conflict before arriving here in recent weeks, though they were battle-scarred veterans of anti-globalization protests, Aschettino said.

``They're like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tear gas, we know, we use it for air freshener at home,''' he said.

Other activists gave them short briefings on the tangled history of the conflict, before sending them out to protest, he said.

Many of the protesters arrive in Israel on their own and find their way to the International Solidarity Movement, an amorphous group of activists. The group includes Americans, Canadians, Britons, Indians and activists from several other countries, Aschettino said.

A 24-year-old from New Jersey who is studying Middle East studies in Cairo, Aschettino came to Israel two weeks ago to try to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians during his spring break.

Now he is a spokesman for the group, though he knows nothing about when or how it was formed.

``Nobody knows anyone. It's very loose,'' he said.

While cracking down on the Palestinian militants, Israel has also tried to neutralize the foreigners. When the 10 activists made it into the church, Israeli forces arrested 13 others who had tried to accompany them.

Nineteen other foreigners, most of them French, were deported from Israel earlier this month after they defied the army and entered the besieged compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

And Israel has prevented approximately 200 foreigners who said they were humanitarian aid volunteers from entering Israel, the government said.

``As long as any foreigners are allowed into Israel or Palestine, we will still be here,'' Aschettino said.

www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-1726819,00.html

[By courtesy of Rusy, Bruxelles.]