Bloody crossroads at center of debate

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Bloody crossroads at center of debate NETZARIM JUNCTION, Gaza Erekat. Strip (AP) - This violent cros- sroads, scene of some of the At Netzarim Junction, a highway been blown out, sending them into a frenzy of shock, rage and grief.

"Allahu Akhbar (God is great)!" bloodiest battles in six days of crossroad in the scrubby flatlands Israeli-Palestinian clashes, is of the central Gaza Strip, a lone they screamed.

One of the group army outpost guards the access seized a handful of bloody brain ground zero in a growing debate: road to a Jewish settlement by the How much force is too much force? matter and waved it wildly in his same name. bare hands.

Israeli military doctrine is sim- Like many other settlements in Palestinian police tried to block ple: When soldiers' lives are the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the group from charging the Israeli threatened, deadly force is justi- Netzarim is loathed by Palesti- outpost, but they snatched up rocks fied.

But in places like Netzarim, where teen-age Palestinian stone- nians living in nearby towns and re- and furiously stoned the police. throwers are being felled by live fugee camps as a symbol of oppres- quickly breaking through their sion and occupation. lines. bullets and machine-gun fire from The Israeli soldiers at Netzarim As firing broke out, some shots helicopter gunships, the unequal matchup has Israelis on the defen- Junction, many of them teen-age appeared to come from a building conscripts, are far outnumbered by on the Palestinian side, pocked sive.

Israel argues that the presence of mobs of rioters who have besieged with bullet holes.

Smoke billowed their isolated post each day. from piles of burning tires in the Palestinian gunmen among the de- monstrators- even if they are only Given their state of hair-trigger street. jumpiness, it sometimes is only a a tiny minority in the crowd - leaves its soldiers with no choice matter of moments before a lower- Israeli helicopters circled over- level confrontation - stone- head, as dozens of youths ran but to use live ammunition.

"Wherever we are fired upon, we throwing repelled by rubber bullets through the street, one waving a and tear gas - turns into a full- Palestinian flag. A veiled Palesti- will fire back, " Ephraim Speh, the deputy defense minister, told scale battie with live ammunition. nian woman stumbled as she tried On Tuesday at the junction, a to get out of the line of fire.

Israel radio on Tuesday. Since the unrest began last week, chaotic scene erupted when a rioter Demonstrators rushed to carry 56 people have died.

Two of the on a warehouse rooftop adjacent to wounded to arriving ambulances dead were Israeli soldiers and one the army outpost was struck by a One drove off so fast that a roll of was a Jewish Israeli civilian, but 43 missile. surgical tape unwound out its open Onlookers said the man — identi- back doors. were Palestinians and the other 10 fied as 28-year-old Fahmi Abu At least 41 people were hurt and were Israeli Arabs.

Amounah - was throwing stones. two other men killed in the daylong "It's not a war. We're not shoot- But the army said he was probably shooting toward the soldiers. battle, according to hospital offi- ing at them; they're shooting at us and we're dying," counters senior Friends who jumped to his ald cials.

The army acknowiedged the use of live fire and said helicopter Palestinian negotiator Saeb saw that his brains had literally gunships fired rockets.

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"Bloody crossroads at center of debate," The Sun, 4 October 2000. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2000-032. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2000-032

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They could not agree on his name