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Israelis and Palestinians resume clashes

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December 10, 2000 

JERUSALEM-- (UNB/AP) - Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen battled again on Saturday, while the Palestinians buried seven people killed a day earlier in one of the deadliest days since fighting began over two months ago.

Three Israelis were also killed in Friday's violence, and Israel responded by tightening its already strict blockade of Palestinian towns.

In renewed violence Saturday, 13-year-old Mansur Dshaber was shot in the abdomen and seriously wounded near the volatile West Bank town of Hebron. The boy was hit in a confrontation with Jewish settlers who live nearby, according to Dshaber's uncle, Ata Dshaber.

The Israeli army sent in a helicopter to evacuate the youth to a Jerusalem hospital for treatment. Also, Palestinian gunmen and Israeli troops traded gunfire in Hebron, according to the army and witnesses.

Overnight, Palestinians and Israeli troops shot at each other on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem. Also, the Israelis fired machine gun rounds and tank shells at the village of al-Khader, just outside Bethlehem, according to residents.

Thousands of Palestinians filled the streets in the West Bank town of Jenin on Saturday to attended the emotional funeral of five Palestinians killed a day earlier by Israeli tank shells fired on a police guard post. Four of the dead were policemen, along with one civilian.

"Fight, fight, until the end of the Israeli occupation," shouted the crowd. Some wore masks and carried guns.

Two other Palestinians were buried Saturday in mass funerals in the West Bank, one in Ramallah, and one in Bethlehem.

Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, pledged that the fighting would intensify.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army imposed a strict closure on areas under the full control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, further restricting Palestinian travel. A general closure imposed since the fighting broke out has banned Palestinians from entering Israel.

The Palestinian Cabinet met late Friday in Gaza and termed Israel's policy one of "collective punishment" that would only exacerbate tensions.

"The Israeli government is launching an unjust war of aggression against the Palestinian people aimed at humiliating the Palestinian nation," a Cabinet statement said.

The latest surge of unrest came just days before the arrival of a U.S.-led commission that will look into the causes of the violence.

Speaking to Israeli peace activists, Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Friday that the unrest did not bode well for resuming peace negotiations - although a peace deal was still his ultimate goal.

In Friday's violence, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a van carrying Israelis to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron. A 39-year-old school teacher and mother of six, as well as the driver, were killed.

After nightfall, Palestinian gunmen fired on an Israeli bus near Jericho, killing an Israeli passenger and wounding a second.

Israeli-Palestinian fighting broke out at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa compound, the third holiest site of Islam, on Sept. 28, the day Israeli hard-line leader Ariel Sharon visited the area to demonstrate Israeli control there. Jews revere it as the site of their former biblical Temples, the holiest shrines of Judaism.

Since then, 309 people, the vast majority Palestinians, have been killed.