MIDDLE EAST: Israeli Troops Kill Protesting Palestinians

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Deborah Horan

RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 14 1998 (IPS) - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a reported eight Palestinians, including an eight year-old boy, during violent clashes that erupted Thursday in the West Bank and Gaza.

The violence broke out as Palestinian protesters marked 50 years of dispossession since the creation of Israel.

Thousands of Palestinians threw stones and firebombs at Jewish settlements in Gaza in the worst confrontations in the tiny Palestinian-ruled area since Israel opened an entrance to a controversial archeological tunnel in Jerusalem in 1996 and sparked fiv e days of deadly riots.

Israeli soldiers guarding the Gaza settlements responded with live fire, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets, killing three Palestinians, witnesses in Gaza said.

Two more Palestinians were shot and killed by soldiers stationed at the northern Erez checkpoint into Gaza, they said. News media were quoting eight dead as the sun went down. The Israeli army would not confirm the number of deaths.

Dozens more Palestinians were injured in similar clashes in most West Bank towns as tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered in town centers to mark ‘al-Nakbeh’ — the Catastrophe — of 1948, when some 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from thei r homes during the war that created the state of Israel.

Many carried the green and red flags of Palestine, black flags of mourning and signs reading, ‘No to settlements!’ and ‘Yes to a just and comprehensive peace!’ At noon, sirens wailed during two minutes of silence, a commemoration reminiscent of Israel’s

annual marking of the Holocaust.

Palestinians marked the day on Thursday because May 14 is the day Israel declared independence in 1948, following the end of the British Mandate in Palestine.

The next day, Arab countries opposed to the United Nations vote to create a Jewish homeland attacked — but lost the war and also control of additional territory, including West Jerusalem. Israel celebrated 50 years of independence on April 30, the date

according to the Hebrew calendar.

The violence came against the backdrop of an unusual and emotional appeal by president Yasser Arafat for a Palestinian “place under the sun”.

During a speech laden with references to peace, political independence and Palestinian rights, the 69-year-old guerrilla-turned- peacemaker called on his people to put the past behind them and concentrate on the future.

“We have to put the Catastrophe behind us and build a state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Arafat said in a speech broadcast on the Voice of Palestine and from loudspeakers and minarets throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

“The Palestinian people must live in their homeland, to build a life and to establish a future without fear,” he said. “Homeland is not just a stone or a tree or space or the sea. It’s sovereignty and freedom.”

“We did not fight just to fight,” he added. “We fought for peace. We have rights and it’s about time we get them.”

His appeal came amid low expectations that renewed U.S. efforts to break a 14-month deadlocked in peace negotiations would prove successful.

On Thursday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for a second day in Washington with U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright to discuss the long-overdue Israeli troop withdrawal from West Bank territory.

In Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary, Danny Naveh, told Israel Radio that no progress had been reached in the Washington talks toward narrowing the gap between the U.S. proposal for a 13 percent troop withdrawal and Israel’s offer of nine percent.

In the streets, Palestinians disillusioned with a peace process that has so far brought them a government with little real territorial sovereignty have begun to put their hopes for independence in Arafat’s threat to unilaterally declare statehood when in terim peace agreements expire a little under a year from now.

But many fear that the declaration will provoke Israel to annex chunks of West Bank territory still under its control – a threat Netanyahu has alluded to recently.

“If peace doesn’t work, there will be another intifada,” said Mohammed Ziad, a 19-year-old Palestinian from the Jalazon refugee camp near Ramallah, referring to the seven year uprising against the Israeli occupation that ended with the 1993 interim peace accord.

“But this time, they’ll be an intifada with weapons, not stones, that’s for sure” he predicted. “It will be war.” In his speech, Arafat focused more on the expansion of Jewish settlements, Jerusalem, Palestinian prisoners and the right of 3.5 million ref ugees to return than on negotiations over percentages.

These difficult issues have been shelved for the so-called ‘final status’ negotiations that were supposed to have begun two years ago.

“We are asking for the return of the exiled to the homeland and to build an independent Palestinian state on our land, on our land, on our land as all humans do and to celebrate in our eternal capital Jerusalem,” Arafat said to a cheering crowd.

“We promise that we will not… compromise on (our demand for) Palestine and we tell our people in the refugee camps in near and distant lands that we will continue to demand their rights,” he said.

The words appeal to Palestinians, many of whom carried wooden and cardboard keys during Thursday’s protests to symbolise their lost homes and dispersal to refugee camps 50 years ago.

And throughout his speech, the Palestinian leader played on a theme that resonates with regular Palestinians: “sumud”, Arabic for “steadfastness” or “tenacity” in the face of adversity. Slogans with the word appeared on many of the signs held by proteste rs; Arafat’s speech repeatedly alluded to it.

“We have to continue the work for this last quarter of an hour,” he said, in what Palestinians said meant that they were entering the final stretch of a long struggle. “Victory is coming, victory is coming.”