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Clashes resume as Palestinians bury dead

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October 29, 2000 

JERUSALEM (AP) - Rock-throwing clashes erupted in the volatile Gaza Strip on Saturday as Palestinians buried their dead in mass funerals following a day of widespread confrontations.

A 14-year-old Palestinian boy was in serious condition after being shot in the head during clashes at Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, near the border with Egypt. At least six Palestinians were injured in three separate protests in Gaza, Palestinian officials said.

Friday's unrest in Palestinian cities throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip marked an upsurge in violence after several days of comparatively low-level violence.

Four Palestinians were killed and more than 150 were injured, while four Israeli troops were hurt. Some 5,000 mourners gathered Saturday in Gaza City for the funeral of one of the dead, and thousands more were expected at another funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The fighting lasted into the early hours of Saturday as Palestinian gunmen fired on Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood in southern Jerusalem. Nine Jewish apartments and a school building were damaged in what has become an almost nightly ritual of shooting from the adjacent Palestinian village of Beit Jalla on the West Bank.

Israeli soldiers initially fired machine-guns at Beit Jalla, but around midnight, a helicopter cruised over the village and fired a missile. Tanks stationed in Gilo fired two shells, targeting suspected assailants, police said. There were no reports of injuries.

In Syria, Islamic militants who already claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip warned Friday that more attacks were to come.

"This operation will be the beginning for more operations against Israeli soldiers. We will not attack Israeli civilians," Ramadan Shalah, the leader of the Islamic Jihad group, told a rally.

Friday's mayhem began with Palestinians pouring out of mosques following midday prayers and clashing with Israeli troops. The confrontations soon sent clouds of acrid smoke and tear gas over most every major Palestinian city.

Palestinians have declared Fridays, the Muslim holy days, "Days of Rage" since fighting erupted a month ago. At mass rallies, Muslim radicals echoed Shalah's threats to unleash more suicide bombers on Israel, chanting, "We want a big bomb."

Scores of Israelis were killed in bomb attacks in markets, on busy streets and on buses during the mid-1990s. Cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces helped bring down the number of bombings in the past few years.

However, Israel has been on high alert for new attacks since several dozen Islamic militants were released from Palestinian jails two weeks ago. A Palestinian identified as an Islamic Jihad member rode his bicycle to an Israeli army post in Gaza and detonated explosives strapped to his back, killing himself and injuring a soldier Thursday.

U.S. President Bill Clinton is trying to revive peace talks and has offered to host Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at separate meetings in Washington. But he acknowledged the current climate was not conducive for peace talks.

"We've got to get the level of violence down before there can be a resumption of negotiations," Clinton told reporters in Washington.

Israel, which has suspended peace negotiations, also insists that restoring calm is a precondition for new talks. Palestinian street activists, and some leaders, see sustained confrontations as the best way to put pressure on Israel.

Thirty days of fighting has left 133 dead, all but a few of them Palestinians.

Though both sides appeared to drift even further apart with Friday's violence, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat appeared on Israel TV alongside Transport Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a senior negotiator on the Israeli side.

They did exchange greetings and addressed each other by name - but did not seem to find common language, deadlocked in the vicious circle of rhetoric.

"As long as there's violence in the streets it is mission impossible to sit and have a serious dialogue," Lipkin-Shahak said.

"I want the Israelis not to speak to Palestinians with missiles, with choppers, with gunships, with tanks. I want the Israelis to speak to Palestinians as neighbors," Erekat countered.