PALESTINE: Six dead, hundreds wounded as negotiations continue

RAMALLAH — Clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops
broke out in the West Bank on May 15 and 16, the most violent confrontations
since 1998. Four Palestinians were killed; two Palestinian children also
died when they were deliberately run over by Israeli settlers.

The demonstrations were organised to demand the release of the 1650
Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and to commemorate the Nakba,
the eviction of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and land by Zionist
forces in 1948.

The May 15 demonstrations were the heaviest in the West Bank towns of
Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and Qalqilya. In Ramallah and Jenin,
gunfire was exchanged between Palestinians and Israeli troops. More than
600 protesters were wounded by rubber-coated metal bullets, gas and live
ammunition fired by Israeli troops.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) was quick to prevent further escalation
of the demonstrations and around 100 baton-wielding Palestinian police
broke up a demonstration against the Israelis on May 16.

The clashes coincided with an open-ended hunger strike by Palestinian
prisoners in Israeli jails. In retaliation, soldiers stormed the Megiddo
prison, injuring an estimated 100 prisoners with gas canisters and sound
bombs.

The Israeli military claims that the demonstrations were organised by
PA president Yasser Arafat and spiralled out of control. Palestinian officials
portray them as rather a spontaneous outpouring of anger. In fact, the
demonstrations were a combination of the two.

There is indeed a strong feeling on the street, cutting across political
factions and communities, which opposes negotiations between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority and the “peace process” launched in the early
1990s, which has given Palestinians little.

PA officials and the media also did their best to bring people onto
the streets with countless statements, national songs and reprises of episodes
of Palestinian history, such as the war in Lebanon, the intifada
(uprising) of the late 1980s and the large-scale uprising of September
1996.

But many Palestinians are reluctant to risk their lives for what one
demonstrator described to Green Left Weekly as “secret negotiations
and Arafat's corrupt authority”.

Eyewitness reports claim that those who fired at Israeli troops were
members of the “Tanzimat”, or local Fatah organisations composed of activists
from the intifada. These activists, although members of Yasser Arafat's
ruling organisation, are resentful of the power given to those Palestinians
close to Arafat who returned from abroad without participating in the intifada.

The Tanzimat are heavily armed and all attempts by the PA to disarm
them have failed. During the May 15 clashes, the head of the Palestinian
Preventative Security, Jibril Rajub, arrived with a large convoy of soldiers
and attempted to remove Tanzimat snipers from nearby buildings. When the
Tanzimat pointed their guns at Rajoub, he was forced to let them leave
armed and untouched.

The Tanzimat's growing discontent is only one symptom of the breakdown
in the Palestinian national movement which has followed the extension of
the PA's rule to most Palestinian towns in the West Bank.

Various heavily armed groups dabble in a mix of politics and trade in
stolen goods while offering their services to the highest bidders. Residents
of Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah — well-known for their heavily armed
gangs — joke about their camp's imminent declaration of independence.

Following the violence, it was revealed that secret negotiations were
underway in Sweden between the PA and the Israeli government.

BY AHMED NIMER

From GLW issue 406