Israel cracks down in Gaza Strip; Palestinians prepare for meeting

Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM — Israeli troops in the occupied Gaza Strip wounded 12 Palestinians on Thursday and blew up the homes of nine accused of attacking soldiers with grenades or firebombs.

Islamic fundamentalists urged the Palestine National Council, which convenes Saturday in Algiers, to wage an armed struggle against Israel and criticized those who favor peace negotiations. A leaflet distributed by a group called Hamas (Zeal) said: ‘Who authorized the PNC to sign a peace agreement with the Jews?

Is it the Palestinian martyrs, is it the wounded, is it the Palestinian child … who lost an eye sitting in his mother’s lap? ‘We announce clearly: No to a Zionist state in the land of Palestine, no to peace with murderers … yes to the armed struggle.’

The 450-member PNC, which serves as a Palestinian legislature, is expected to declare an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where 11 Israelis and at least 310 Palestinians have been killed in an 11-month-old rebellion against Israeli occupation.

Israeli troops are expected to seal off the occupied territories during the Palestine National Council meeting, barring journalists without escorts and prohibiting Palestinians from traveling to and from Israel. In the Gaza Strip, Maj. Gen.

Yitzhak Mordechai said the demolition of nine houses was a lesson to Palestinians that ‘those who try to hurt us with grenades and firebombs will find themselves hurt.’

Palestinians told Law in the Service of Man, a human rights group founded by Arab lawyers, that soldiers bulldozed 72 houses in the Jifliq shantytown near a settlement where an Israeli soldier was stabbed to death Monday. In the West Bank, soldiers raided seven Palestinian homes overnight in Nablus, Palestinian witnesses reported.

They said it was the third such action in as many days. The daily Maariv said the raids were intended to prevent violence during the PNC meeting and several Palestinians were detained.

Palestinians confirmed a report in the Jerusalem Post that soldiers smashed windows, vandalized furniture and beat residents, then ordered them into the streets to remove barricades from roads and paint over anti-Israeli graffiti. The army said it was checking the report.”

Context added by this archive

Eleven months after Hamas was founded, an American paper prints its leaflet at length and sets a sentence from it in display type across the top of the story. The paper glosses the name for its readers as Hamas (Zeal).

The same page carries nine houses demolished as a stated lesson, 72 more bulldozed at Jifliq, and a Palestinian human rights group named by its own name — Law in the Service of Man, which is al-Haq.

Cite this item

"Israel cracks down in Gaza Strip; Palestinians prepare for meeting," The State, 11 November 1988. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1988-054. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1988-054