Palestinians Happy But Israelis Wary

Transcribed from the clipping

“JERICHO, Occupied West Bank (AP) — One minute, thousands strained to catch the moment on the small TV and transistor radio on a stage in Jericho’s main square. The next, they beat drums, waved flags and danced arm-in-arm as the sun disappeared behind the foothills.

The throngs packing the streets Monday clapped, cheered and sang when Israel and the PLO signed their landmark peace agreement. ‘I feel so good inside,’ said Nasser Prince, a 28-year-old money changer. ‘I hope I and my children will be able to live in a real peace. ‘Now we can be friends with the Israelites.’

The celebrations were striking not only as a display of sheer delirium by a people fighting for years for a homeland, but as a show of support for PLO chief Yasser Arafat. Israeli military patrols in Jericho had orders to stay away so Palestinians could savor the historic day. Some Palestinians gave the soldiers flowers.

PLO activists deployed its own security force to keep the festivities as orderly as possible. Hours before, a strike called by the Islamic fundamentalist foes of Arafat and the accord closed stores and kept cars from the streets in the West Bank.

In Gaza City in the morning, fundamentalists lobbed stones at about 4,000 Palestinians waving flags and chanting support for the deal. The crowd marching through the streets doubled by nightfall. Similar large marches were held elsewhere in Gaza. Israeli soldiers shot and slightly wounded 16 anti-pact demonstrators in clashes in Gaza Monday night.

At Shati refugee camp, Israeli troops wounded 10 Hamas activists hurling stones at them from the roof of a mosque, Arab reporters and hospital officials said. In Gaza City, six other Palestinians were shot after stoning patrolling soldiers.

Palestinian refugees living in neighboring Jordan and Syria tore up pictures of Arafat, burned Israeli flags, marched angrily through the streets and promised to wreck the PLO-Israeli peace. In a Beirut suburb, security forces fired on protesters, killing seven and wounding 41.

In Iran, Tehran radio said ‘Arafat has sold 98 percent (of Palestinian lands) to the Zionist regime.’ In Arab east Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinians waved their once-banned red, white, green and black Palestinian flag. Many wept, kissed each other and sang their national anthem, ‘My Country, My Country.’

Everyone agreed that the Palestinians gained a measure of freedom, but they disagreed on how much. Despite Palestinian proclamations of statehood, few Israelis have ever envisioned this. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s main opposition Likud bloc, called it a ‘historic blunder.’

In Tel Aviv, where many people left work early to watch the signing ceremony or brought TVs to work, Hasbiel Pick said he was the odd man out.”

Context added by this archive

The day the accord was signed, reported from Jericho, and the first person quoted is not an official. Nasser Prince, a 28-year-old money changer, is named with his age and his trade and given three sentences.

The same dispatch counts 16 demonstrators shot by Israeli soldiers that night, 10 more wounded on a mosque roof at Shati and six shot in Gaza City, and it carries the opposition leader calling the agreement a historic blunder.

A correction

{'note': 'This scan arrived captioned 25 August 1961. The copy reports the signing of the Israel—PLO agreement and quotes Benjamin Netanyahu as leader of the Likud opposition, which places it in September 1993. No masthead is in the scan, so the day is taken from the dispatch’s own Monday and marked estimated.'}

Cite this item

"Palestinians Happy But Israelis Wary," The Daily News, 14 September 1993. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1993-010. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1993-010