Israeli soldier shoots into a crowd in Hebron, injuring six Palestinians

Transcribed from the clipping

“Zuhair Muhtasseh was among them. He saw an Israeli soldier in green fatigues and a black skullcap standing before an army watchtower on the edge of the market. The soldier suddenly aimed his M16 rifle at the crowd. ‘He stood there and started shooting,’ said the 32-year-old Palestinian painter. ‘He finished the first clip. He was about to put in the second one [when Israeli soldiers] jumped him.’ Struck by the spray of 10 to 16 rounds, some Palestinians fell to the ground. Others clutched their wounds and raced for cover. Muhtasseh heard many cry ‘Allahu Akbar’ — Arabic for ‘God is great’ — and ‘The settlers are shooting us.’… Muhtasseh, the Palestinian painter, said he wasn’t expecting bloodshed. ‘We were hoping that they would hand over Hebron today,’ he said, standing not far from a marketplace stand that bore bullet holes from the gunman’s rifle. But Said Abu Sneineh, 22, was not surprised that a religious Jewish settler would attack Palestinians. It was another religious Jew, physician Baruch Goldstein, who, wearing an army uniform and carrying a machine gun, killed 29 Muslim worshipers at the tomb of the biblical Abraham in 1994… ‘This is not the first [incident]. This is not the last,’ said Sneineh… At a police barricade in Hebron, a young Palestinian and an Israeli soldier stood face to face. ‘This is peace?’ 15-year-old Omar Shahin asked the soldier. ‘There can be peace,’ the soldier replied. ‘There is peace in Tel Aviv,’ said the teen-ager. ‘But not here.’ ‘Not yet,’ said the soldier. ‘It takes time. I have a kid your age. Maybe when you’re both older, maybe there will be peace.’”

Context added by this archive

A printed exchange in which a named Palestinian teenager and an Israeli soldier are both given their own words, and neither is characterized. The headline names the shooter, which most of the death headlines in this archive do not. The eyewitness is a painter.

Cite this item

"Israeli soldier shoots into a crowd in Hebron, injuring six Palestinians," The Baltimore Sun, 2 January 1997. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1997-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1997-004

Elsewhere in the archive

Security ReasonsThe Baltimore Sun · 30 August 1994 · the same newspaper
Protest draws blood at Israeli settlementThe Baltimore Sun · 31 December 1994 · the same newspaper
‘Administrative detention’: Israelis skip due processThe Baltimore Sun · 6 February 1991 · the same newspaper
Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters clash at close range in Hebron, West Bank. The clash occurred after the funeral of a Palestinian killed Tuesday.South Florida Sun Sentinel · 10 April 1997 · the same year
Murders linked to land sales reopen an ugly chapter in Israeli-Palestinian historyThe Oregonian · 4 June 1997 · the same year
Graffiti in the occupied territoriesChicago Tribune · 3 September 1997 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1997-004.

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