Eight Palestinians, including two children and a policeman, were shot dead in clashes with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip yesterday, as mass Palestinian protests, called to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Israel, exploded into the worst violence here for almost two years.
Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) had organised marches throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip to commemorate the nakba - the catastrophe of May 14th, 1948 - when the establishment of the state of Israel saw the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. But in East Jerusalem (where mounted Israeli police dispersed demonstrations), some West Bank towns and, especially, the Gaza Strip, the marches were followed by violent confrontation.
Most deaths came in Gaza, near an Israeli army position guarding a bloc of Jewish settlements. Hundreds of Palestinians converged, stoning and throwing petrol bombs; the outnumbered soldiers opened fire. Mr Ahmed Tibi, an adviser to President Yasser Arafat, accused the troops of "shooting indiscriminately". Israeli army commanders blamed Palestinian police for failing to intervene, and said the troops had come under fire.
There were fatalities, too, in clashes at the northern and southern edges of the Gaza Strip. In all, almost 200 Palestinians were injured in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Jenin, Bethlehem and Ramallah. Among the dead, Palestinian sources say, were two boys, aged eight and 10, an ambulance attendant and a policeman. Israeli sources say the policeman was apparently accidentally shot by a Palestinian colleague.
The intensity of yesterday's protests underlined that the wound opened 50 years ago remains raw. Apart from black flags and banners condemning the Israeli occupation, marchers held aloft huge keys, to symbolise the homes from which they had fled in 1948, never to return. A midday siren brought the West Bank and Gaza to a two-minute silent memorial standstill, but it was not only a fading historic injustice that was being highlighted.
The anger in Gaza was a consequence of the sense of hopelessness right now, a protest at the worsening economic climate and the failure of the peace process. There, and in the West Bank, the Oslo accords were designed to reduce the potential for violence, by establishing a partnership between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, and by removing many of the army positions - the physical flashpoints.
In a televised address, Mr Arafat praised his people for their fortitude, but said their right to statehood could not be denied for much longer. Looking unwell, and with his bottom lip, as is now customary, trembling intermittently, Mr Arafat declared that the Palestinians "are not just a bunch of refugees begging for pity and charity . . . We have rights, and it is high time for us to reap the harvest."
But the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, is firmly opposing Palestinian claims to statehood. Indeed, Mr Netanyahu is in the US, meeting the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, but reportedly resisting her pressure for a 13 per cent West Bank troop withdrawal that would revive peace efforts. Late last night, a US State Department spokesman said there had been "no breakthrough" at their second meeting, but that "we do have sufficient reason to continue serious work." Mr Netanyahu last night blamed organised incitement on the Palestinian side for yesterday's violence. Reuters adds: In self-ruled Nablus in the northern West Bank, demonstrators beat and stabbed an effigy of Mr Netanyahu cloaked in the Israeli flag before setting it alight.
"You filthy Benjamin," crowds chanted in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where they burned Israeli and American flags and set fire to a model of a Jewish settlement.