Funerals for Palestinians feed rage

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An Israeli police officer aims his gun towards Israeli Arab protestors in the northern city of Nazareth Sunday. Palestinians and Israeli troops waged running gunbattles. It was a vicious, but familiar, cycle, in which the sorrow roused by burials turned into angry confrontations. Funerals for Palestinians feed rage ISRAEL FROM IA ing.

"Our babies' blood is as red as your babies. For the first time, Palestinian riot- ing itself spread beyond the West Bank and Gaza into Arab towns such as Nazareth inside Israel's bor- ders. The size and intensity of the internal riots stunned Israeli police.

Nine Palestinians were reported killed Sunday. bringing the Arab death toll to 28 since Friday, when Israeli troops stormed the area of Al Aksa Mosque in the contested cen- ter of Jerusalem's Old City after Pal- estinians began stoning Jewish wor- shippers at the Western Wall.

That action followed angry scenes on Thursday set off by the visit of the right-wing politician, Ariel Sharon, to the steps of the ancient shrines in the Old City. The riots claimed their first Israeli victim Sunday, a border police offic- er wounded in a gun battle that be gan when Palestinians surrounded oseph's Tomb, a holy Jewish site. in Palestinian-controlled Nablus.

With the deadlocked peace negoti- ations as their backdrop, the Israelis blamed the Palestinians for failing to control their streets while the Pal- estinians, using such wordsas "mur- der" and "massacre, *accused the Is- raelis of excessive force.

A senior Israeli official said that the Israelis believed that the Pales- tinians wanted to exact vengeance *a few Israeli soldiers dead to make it even" before they cracked down on protesters.

In uncharacteristically harsh lan- guage, Foreign Minister Shiomo Ben Ami, accused the Palestinians of orchestrating the clashes "from above, in the hopes that a certain de- gree of violence would serve a short-term political purpose." But he said that unleashing vio lence deliberately is like "trying to ride a tiger.

With black smoke billowing from burning tires and trash cans, funeral processions snaked through the rocky hills of the West Bank and along the sands of the Gaza Strip.

Marching grimly to mourning vers- es from the Koran, Palestinian sol- diers carried aloft the bodies of young men draped in Palestinian Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, flags as fresh bodies collected in the which Jews call the Temple Mount. morgues.

On Israeli television, he said that It was a vicious, but familiar, cy- any Arab could visit Yad Vashem. cle, in which the sorrow roused by the Holocaust memorial, without burials turned into the anger that fu- permission.

Yad Vashem is not a reli- eled new rounds of violent confron- gious site. tation between Palestinian youths But Haram al Sharif is the subject and Israeli soldiers. of a bitter dispute that has dead- Palestinian mourners proceeded locked the Israeli-Palestinian peace directly from village graveyards to talks.

And Sharon, surrounded by Is- the junctions between Israeli and raeli troops, strode into a very frag- Palestinian-ruled areas, where they ile situation, cheered on by national- jumped from pickups adorned with ist Israelis.

He claims that the situa- wreath-encircled pictures of the tion escalated out of control because In one night, it became the image that summed up the horror that many Israelis and Palestinians felt as they came to grips with the vio- lence. Sharon has long symbolized the ugly Israeli to the Arab world.

A former top-ranking general and de- fense minister, he is reviled for his lead role in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and for failing to prevent the massacre of hundreds of Pales. tinians in refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982.

He is also seen as an archi- tect of the Israeli settlement policy. dead to collect and hurl stones at Is- of inflammatory language used by raeli soldiers dressed in riot gear.

Israeli-Arab lawmakers who were "Our people are ready to have 10 present during his visit. times the numbers of martyrs, said In Palestinian eyes — and those of Rafik Natsheh, the Palestinian labor many Israeli leftists — the present minister. "We gave too much to the violent conflict is framed by "a devil peace process.

We gave it to too and an angel," said Muhammad Abu much of a chance. Hatem, a Gazan laborer and one of It is widely believed here that the many who used the same words. GILMA The Income Tax present violence was touched off by The "devil," as they see it, is Sharon Sharon's visit on Thursday.

The Is and the angelis 12-vear-old Muham- raelis have not acknowledged that. mad al-Durrah, who was killed in On Sunday, though, a senior Israe- the crossfire in Gaza while his father li official said, "It's clear to evervone that it's the Sharon show that creat- tried to shield him.

How To Su Tues., C Cameramen for French television ed the original damage. captured Muhammad's death on Sharon himself has said that he tape, and it was broadcast through- regrets the deaths but stands by his out the region.

The tape showed the original assertion that any Israeli boy and his father cowering beside Comp has the right to visit the Muslim reli- a cement block as Israeli and Pales- gious compound on Haram al tinians forces exchanged gunfire. Topics Discussed. RIGHTEN Your Day With Free Natural Light!

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"Funerals for Palestinians feed rage," Sarasota Herald Tribune, 2 October 2000. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2000-019. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2000-019

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They could not agree on his name