RAMALLAH â 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 â well-known for their heavily armed gangs â 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