Israelis Wound Palestinian Girl at Gaza Protest

Israeli soldiers shot and wounded a 16-year-old Palestinian girl Wednesday during a protest by 350 high school students and prevented a strike of merchants by forcing shop doors open with crowbars.

Some students threw stones at soldiers and Hadiye Sussi was shot in the hand, becoming the third Arab teen-ager wounded by army gunfire in 24 hours. A military spokeswoman said she tried to incite other students, but Sussi denied it.

Five other Palestinian students were taken to Gaza hospitals with injuries from clubbings by Israeli soldiers, hospital officials told reporters. The officials insisted on anonymity, saying the Israeli military government had warned them not to speak with journalists.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, under heavy guard, visited Ramallah and defended the manner in which the army has handled seven days of clashes between soldiers and Palestinian youths in the occupied Arab territories.

“We used the amount of force that we considered necessary to put an end to the disturbances,” Rabin said.

“The goal is to restore public order and return to normal life,” Rabin added. “If there is a need . . . to close a university or school . . . or impose a curfew, we will do it.”

The wave of unrest began last Thursday when Israeli troops shot and killed two Arab students at Birzeit University on the West Bank after a protest demonstration grew violent. Two more Palestinians have been killed and dozens of people injured since the violence began.

The hospital officials in Gaza said many students hurt by clubbings in recent days have not gone to hospitals because they feared soldiers would follow them inside and arrest them. Several arrests were made in that manner Tuesday night, they said.

About 140 doctors staged sit-ins at several Gaza hospitals Wednesday in protest. The army said it could not confirm or deny the claim about arrests.

Sussi said that only boys threw stones at the troops during the Gaza protest. “I tried to run away and I was shot,” she said from her hospital bed.

The Palestine Press Service, which monitors events in the West Bank and Gaza, reported Wednesday that 600 Palestinians have been arrested in the last week. The army said it could not say immediately how many arrests have been made.

Soldiers patrolled the streets Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, home to 600,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom live in refugee camps.

Shopkeepers said the troops forced them to open stores for the fifth straight day despite their plans to strike.

Troops also patrolled major towns in the West Bank. Palestinian sources said soldiers put down a brief disturbance in Nablus.