The New York Times · 22 November 1984

CP-1984-042

Israeli Troops Shoot Arab Student Dead at Protest

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

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Transcribed from the clipping

BIR ZEIT, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, Nov. 21 — Israeli soldiers opened fire today on a crowd of stone-throwing Arab students who were demonstrating in support of the Palestinian guerrilla leader Yasir Arafat. One student was killed and six were wounded.

An Israeli Army spokesman said the soldiers were trapped by the crowd and had to open fire on the demonstrators to extricate themselves. But the Arab students said the army opened fire to break up the rally backing the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The town of Bir Zeit, 15 miles north of Jerusalem, was put under curfew this afternoon as hundreds of student demonstrators were holed up in the cafeteria on the old campus of Bir Zeit University and Israeli troops ringed the college.

After several hours of tense negotiations between university representatives and Israeli officials, the students agreed to disperse and the army let them pass. The killing of a 23-year-old Bir Zeit University engineering student, Sharif Khalil Taibe, was the first death of a West Bank demonstrator since Jan.

28, when a 17-year-old Nablus youth was shot in a similar protest clash with Israeli troops. Several other violent incidents were reported around the Israeli-occupied West Bank as some of the Arab inhabitants appeared to be trying to express solidarity with a meeting of the Palestine National Council, the P.L.O.’s parliament in exile, that is scheduled Thursday in Amman.

The disturbances in Bir Zeit began shortly after 10:30 A.M., students said. “We were chanting slogans and carrying signs in support of chairman Yasir Arafat,” one 22-year-old student said. “We were shouting, ‘With our blood and our spirit we will redeem Palestine and Yasir Arafat.’

We wanted people in Amman to know that we supported the convening of the National Council.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from a scan of the printed page. The date, the page number and the newspaper are all fixed from the page itself: the strip carries the folio 'A6' at the left and, centred, 'THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1984'; 22 November 1984 was a Thursday, and the dateline reads 'BIR ZEIT, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, Nov. 21'. The page prints the Israeli Army's account of the shooting and the Arab students' account side by side without adjudicating between them, and the columns beyond the excerpt carry a further army statement and an American witness who asked not to be identified. The dead student is named and aged; the student quoted at length is given an age but no name. Read from crops magnified to between nine and sixteen times page scale.

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