Clash Kills Arab Protester Death Raises Fears Of More Violence Today
A Palestinian university student was shot dead in clashes with Israeli soldiers near the West Bank town of Ramallah on Saturday, the 10th day of violent protests against an Israeli settlement in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.
Palestinian police said Israeli soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on stone-throwing demonstrators.
The death of the 20-year-old - the first in the recent wave of clashes - raised fears of further bloodshed during expected mass protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip today.
Palestinians have organized the demonstrations to mark Land Day, which commemorates a 1976 incident in which six Arab villagers in Israel were shot by border police during a protest over expropriated land. Fatah, the political organization of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, has called on its people to rally against the construction of a new Israeli settlement on a Jerusalem hill called Har Homa in Hebrew and Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic.
“I think (the shooting) is very dangerous,” Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Fatah, told Israeli television after Saturday’s fatal clash. “I think this will explode everything.”
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and security cooperation were frozen after the housing project’s groundbreaking and a suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv cafe on March 21 that killed three Israelis. U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross ended two days of emergency talks in the region Friday saying that ending the violence is a prerequisite for renewing negotiations.
The Palestinians responded that the Israeli decision to go ahead with the controversial settlement is responsible for the violence.
Palestinian police officials said they have standing orders to try to prevent violence between demonstrators and Israeli soldiers and that no new orders had been issued in the wake of the shooting.
Ramallah police and hospital officials said Abdullah Khalil Salah was shot in the chest with live ammunition during a confrontation at dusk at the southern entrance to Ramallah, a self-rule enclave near Jerusalem.
Few details were available. An Israeli army spokeswoman said only that the Israel Defense Forces are investigating the death in conjunction with Palestinian police.
Ramallah Government Hospital surgeon Mohammed Eidi said Salah was shot in the heart with live ammunition.
It was not clear why the Israeli security forces would have fired live ammunition after more than a week of using rubber bullets and tear gas to fight back rock-throwing youths.
Israeli soldiers are under standing orders to let Palestinian police disperse crowds and to use nonlethal means to fight back except in lifethreatening situations.
In clashes around the West Bank on Saturday, at least 24 other Palestinians were wounded when Israeli troops fired rubber bullets at demonstrators stoning them. Twelve others in Ramallah were hospitalized for tear-gas inhalation.