The New York Times · 14 April 1987

CP-1987-052

PALESTINIAN KILLED BY ISRAELI TROOPS

Student Is One of Four Shot in the West Bank During a Protest Over Arrests

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Special to The New York Times

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Transcribed from the clipping

RAMALLAH, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, April 13 — Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian student and wounded at least three others today when West Bank youths took to the streets to protest the arrest by Israel of nine Palestinians. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the detention of the Palestinians, including two prominent intellectuals, late Sunday night.

They were put under administrative detention, under which they can be held without charge or trial for up to six months. This morning about 400 students — shouting “P.L.O.!

Israel no!” and “God is great!” — gathered for a demonstration in support of the nine Palestinians outside Bir Zeit University, 15 miles north of Jerusalem on the West Bank.

A clash erupted between the students and Israeli soldiers trying to break up the protest, and the soldiers eventually opened fire on the students with live ammunition, witnesses said.

Corpse Taken From Hospital The dead student, Musa Hanafi, 23 years old, from Rafah in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, was rushed to a hospital in Ramallah, five miles north of Jerusalem, with a bullet wound in the neck. After he died, some of his friends apparently spirited his corpse out of the hospital before Israeli soldiers could impound it.

To prevent Palestinian funerals from turning into demonstrations, Israeli troops sometimes impound the bodies of Palestinians killed in demonstrations, only allowing their families to bury them at night in closed ceremonies.

Today’s shooting at Bir Zeit was the latest in a widening cycle of clashes between Israeli soldiers and settlers on one side and Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip on the other.

The mounting frustration on both sides is palpable: The Israeli authorities and Jewish settlers on the West Bank seem increasingly angered by the fact that no matter how many people they arrest, no matter how many Palestinian leaders they expel and no matter what security measures they adopt, the level of anti-Israeli Palestinian violence continues to mount.

Palestinians Lashing Out If anything, Palestinian youths have become more brazen in their willingness to confront armed Israeli troops or to attack Israelis in broad daylight.

According to Majid, a Bir Zeit student council leader who asked that his last name not be used, today’s demonstration began at about 10 A.M. when students blocked roads with tires and stones around the old campus in the village of Bir Zeit. An army patrol came along and ordered them to clear the road, which they began to do, he said.

“Then all of a sudden three buses full of Israeli soldiers showed up and hundreds of students started to gather,” the student said in a telephone interview. “As soon as the soldiers came out of the buses, they started shooting at the students.”

According to an Israeli Army spokesman, today’s clash began when hundreds of students gathered outside the campus. “They started to throw stones and burn tires and block the road,” the army spokesman said.

“The soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas, and when this did not help disperse the students, and the soldiers’ lives were at risk, they opened fire with real bullets.”

How this transcription was made

Transcribed from the slide scan by a reader working off magnified crops, not by optical character recognition. The date, the page number and the newspaper are all printed on the page, in a complete running head reading “A6 L THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1987”, and the newspaper again in the credit line “Special to The New York Times” under the byline. Nothing about this record rests on the slide label. The scan is a full page carrying, besides this article, a second one — “Rival Palestinians Meet in Effort to End Division” by Ihsan A. Hijazi, datelined Beirut, April 13 — and a large Lord & Taylor handbag advertisement occupying the lower two-thirds of the page. Only the first article is transcribed here.

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