AT least seven Palestinians were killed when a gun battle erupted on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, the Ramallah hospital and a senior PLO official said early today.
A hospital spokesman said some 300 others were injured. It said the death toll was expected to rise because three of the injured were in critical condition.
Palestinian policemen and Israeli soldiers traded long bursts of automatic fire, as the two sides relapsed into the violent conflict that has seemed increasingly inevitable since the new Israeli government took office in June and froze the peace process.
Demonstrations spread across the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The injured included two ministers from the Palestinian Authority and 10 Israeli soldiers.
Near Bethlehem, Israeli troops and Palestinian police exchanged gunfire by a Jewish holy site. Two Israelis, a soldier and a fireman, were wounded, rescue crews said.
Israel last night sealed off the West Bank, and the Palestinians pulled out of peace talks scheduled for today - they have been tentatively rescheduled for Sunday - plunging the peace process into its worst crisis since it began three years ago. Frantic efforts were under way last night to prevent further violence today.
Typically, the Israelis and the Palestinians blamed each other for creating the hostile climate that started the violence, and for firing the first shots. According to the Palestinians, Israel deliberately provoked Palestinian protests by secretively re opening an ancient tunnel on Monday night that runs alongside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. Yesterday's outpouring of anger, Palestinian officials said was the unavoidable consequence of Israel's latest attempt to "Judaise" the disputed Old City.
The Israelis countered that the tunnel project was merely a tourist route that in no way threatened the two mosques on top of Temple Mount, and that the out bursts of violence were premeditated, and designed to intimidate - the government.
As for the precise circumstances of the gun battle - which raged across the dividing line between Palestinian controlled Ramallah and the Israeli occupied territory just outside the city - Palestinian eyewitnesses insisted that Israeli troops fired live bullets into a crowd of hundreds of demonstrators. That, they said, left the Palestinian policemen with little option but to return fire.
Israeli military spokesmen, by contrast, said the demonstration was organised by Hamas opponents of the peace process, and stressed that two Palestinian policemen were the first to open fire. They said the shootings took place after repeated Israeli pleas to the Palestinian policemen, to try and restore calm, had gone unheeded. And they noted that three of the dead men were policemen.
Yesterday's violence was by far the most widespread since the late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the PLO chief, Mr Yasser Arafat, began their peacemaking efforts in 1993.
The reopening of the Jerusalem tunnel, though an emotive issue, would not have sparked the furore it has done were it not for the build up of Palestinian frustration and resentment over 100 days that have seen no progress whatsoever in peace negotiations.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, is currently on an attempted goodwill trip to Europe, and in Paris yesterday he appealed for calm while accusing the Palestinian leadership of deliberately "whipping up passions" by distorting the details of the Jerusalem tunnel.
But it was Mr Arafat's declaration that Israel had provoked the violence, and that peace hopes were now in crisis" that echoed in other Arab capitals. Jordan's King Hussein, Israel's firmest Arab ally, called for an international committee to resolve the dispute.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report
. Setting a precedent, rival Palestinian factions issued a joint statement calling for a Palestinian day of mourning today and two hour strikes across the West Bank and Gaza. Factions listed on the joint statement were Fatah, the left wing Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas.