Heavy Clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas took steps to tamp down growing attacks on Israelis in both the West Bank and Jerusalem, telling a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that he does not want violent conflict with Israel.
“We tell them (the Israelis) that we do not want either military or security escalation,” Abbas said at the PLO meeting. “All our instructions to our (security) agencies, our factions and our youth have been that we do not want escalation.”
He spoke as heavy clashes broke out in several areas of the West Bank following the funeral of a 13-year-old boy killed by Israeli fire yesterday. Palestinians say he was shot in the chest on his way home from school, while Israeli military officials said he threw stones at soldiers. More than 1200 Palestinians came to the funeral, and Bethlehem held a general strike.
Dozens of Palestinians were wounded in the clashes throughout the West Bank, and at least one Palestinian was reported critically injured in Beit Hanina, a northern neighborhood of Jerusalem. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police are working hard to ensure calm.
“There are 3500 police officers in and around the Old City of Jerusalem,” Rosenfeld told The Media Line. “They are deployed to prevent any terrorist attacks or riots by Palestinians.”
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that Israel will install security cameras at all junctions in the West Bank, both on the ground and in the air to combat a rising surge of terrorism.
“We decided today to enact a major plan to employ cameras at all junctions in the West Bank both on the ground and in the air, with connections to the operations room,” Netanyahu said at the end of a tour of the area where a husband and wife were shot to death in a car, while their four children who were in the back seat escaped unharmed. “This is an important element of restoring security and foiling terrorist attacks.”
In addition to Naama and Eitam Henkin (a US citizen), two other Israelis were killed in Jerusalem’s Old City. In that attack, Adele Lavi, whose husband was killed, said she had cried for help after she was stabbed but Palestinian shopkeepers refused to help her, and even laughed at her.
“I asked that their stores be shuttered and they be brought to justice,” Netanyahu said.
Tensions are running high among both Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians were furious about the killing of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and his mother in an arson attack, believed to be committed by extremist Israelis. There have been no arrests in the case. They are also seething over what they see as Israel’s efforts to change the status quo at a Jerusalem site that is holy to Jews and Muslims, by encouraging more extremist Jews to visit the site.
“Palestinians have entered the stage of an overall popular uprising,” Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the Palestine National Initiative told The Media Line. “What is happening in Jerusalem and the shooting which targeted radical Jewish settlers (Eitam and Naama Henkin) was a normal response after the Israeli government shed too much blood.”
He said that Palestinians have grown frustrated at the lack of a diplomatic initiative and have decided to respond with violence.
But other Palestinian officials said that it is too early to call what is currently happening an “intifada”, or uprising, similar to the first intifada which began in late 1987, or the second intifada of 2000- 2005/
“The most important guarantee for the success of this reaction is the immediate formation of a unified national leadership, as was done in the first intifada,” Wasel abu Yusuf Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Front told The Media Line.
On the Israeli side, thousands demonstrated against Netanyahu, saying that he has failed to ensure security in Israel. Israelis say that driving on the roads, especially in the West Bank, has become increasingly dangerous.
Erica Marom, a journalist, lives in the West Bank community of Tekoa. Last week, in the middle of the day, she was driving home from her parents’ house in another community called Efrat, when her car was hit with large stones, shattering the rear window. She was slightly injured from a shard of glass that embedded itself in her leg, and her children, although covered with glass, were unharmed.
“We’re still quite shaken up,” she told The Media Line. “It was a traumatic experience for everyone in the family to be a victim of what I have to call an attempted murder. As a mother, I can’t let go of the idea that the Henkin family (the parents killed while their children were in the back seat) could have been my husband and children, and it was a miracle that it wasn’t.
She said that Netanyahu must do more to make Israelis feel safe. She said her six-year-old son, the oldest, was especially affected.
“He knows that it was children on their way home from school who carried out the attack,” she said. “He can’t understand why a kid would want to hurt him and try to kill him.”
Rafa Mismar contributed reporting from Ramallah