3 Killed in 3rd Day of Violence on West Bank

Israeli troops shot and killed at least three Palestinians and wounded at least 10 others Friday in the third straight day of the worst violence in years in the occupied territories.

Among the victims were an 11-year-old boy, a 17-year-old girl and a woman in her 50s, all killed when troops opened fire to quell a disturbance after religious services at the Balata refugee camp in Nablus.

Army sources confirmed the death toll and said seven additional Palestinians were wounded at the camp. But reporters saw eight injured Palestinian youths at the Al Ittihad hospital, and doctors said another was in the intensive-care section with critical wounds.

Boy, 14, Reported Killed

Palestinian sources said another boy, age 14, was killed at the camp, and that uncounted additional wounded were inside. Under a tight army curfew, the reporters were prevented from entering the camp to investigate the reports.

Friday’s toll, including three Palestinians wounded by army gunfire in a separate incident in the occupied Gaza Strip, brought the number of Arab casualties from three days of unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to at least six dead and more than 50 wounded.

Friday’s clashes coincided with a report in the authoritative newspaper Haaretz that the military command had decided to take “strong-arm measures more severe than in the past” at the Balata camp, which is considered a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism.

The newspaper quoted unidentified Israeli security sources as saying that troops had tried to avoid confrontations with demonstrators for a “prolonged period” but that those tactics were clearly counterproductive. It said they only encouraged “greater daring” on the part of the demonstrators.

Patrols Increase in Camp

Army sources contacted by The Times confirmed that patrols of paramilitary border guards had been increased in Balata recently in the hope of quieting the camp and preventing the unrest from spreading to other West Bank communities.

After Friday’s clashes, army reinforcements streamed into Nablus, the largest Palestinian city on the West Bank, with about 90,000 predominantly Muslim Arab residents. In addition to border guards, reporters saw officers and men with red berets identifying them as members of paratroop units. They were outside Balata and patrolling the center of the city.

Gen. Amram Mitzna, commander of Israeli forces on the West Bank, said Friday’s violence was serious, but he insisted that as a matter of policy his troops open fire on demonstrators only in self-defense.

According to Israeli officials, Palestinian youths have been much bolder in attacking army patrols in the refugee camps in recent days. They are hard put, though, to explain what might motivate such a spurt of activity.

Analysts blame everything from Friday’s 20th anniversary of the formation of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant, Marxist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to a collision in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in which four Palestinian men were killed and seven others injured when their vans were struck by an Israeli truck.

Rumors Spread Quickly

Rumors quickly spread through Gaza and the West Bank that the Israeli truck driver had struck the vans on purpose in retaliation for the fatal stabbing Sunday in Gaza of an Israeli plastics merchant.

In Gaza, deposed mayor Rashad Shawwa said that desperation among Palestinian young people had led to a rise in religious fundamentalism and increased bitterness toward Israel.

“They have lost hope that Israel will ever give them their rights,” Shawwa told Israel radio. “They feel the Arab countries are unable to accomplish anything. They feel that the PLO . . . has failed to accomplish anything.”

Gaza and Nablus are considered strongholds of Islamic Jihad (Holy War), a fundamentalist movement increasingly identified with the violence here, particularly with attacks on Israeli army targets.

Patrol Comes Under Attack

According to the military, a border guard patrol in Balata came under frenzied attack early Friday afternoon by scores of demonstrators throwing stones, scraps of metal and even axes. The patrol responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and, after three of its members were injured, live ammunition, army sources said.

Wounded Palestinians and other Balata residents interviewed at Al Ittihad hospital said the trouble actually started a few days earlier when military patrols began roughing up and otherwise harassing youths at the camp.

They said the harassment continued Friday afternoon as residents emerged from the mosque after the regular service there.

“We were coming out of the mosque,” a wounded youth said. “They let the old people pass, but then the border patrolmen started picking on young people.”

Stone-Throwing Melee

Other residents came to their defense, and the confrontation quickly turned into a stone-throwing melee. Then the army opened fire.

Reporters arriving on the scene, about 45 miles north of Jerusalem, found the camp’s streets littered with stones, but no sign of life except for Israeli troops and four Palestinian ambulances that were prevented from entering. Just before dark, the reporters heard the sound of two shots in the camp, although it could not be determined if the sounds involved live or rubber bullets or tear-gas canisters.

Army sources said the ambulances were held up so that the army could make sure the dead were taken to military headquarters in Nablus for examination.

One of the ambulances contained the body of Sahar Aljirmi, 17. An attendant seated in the back pulled away a corner of a red plaid blanket to let a reporter to see the girl’s face, but a soldier warned the reporter away.

Dead Identified

The Palestine Press Service, which supports the PLO, identified the other dead acknowledged by the army as Ali Musseid Abdallah, 11, and Suheila Kabi, 57. The press service said that Abdallah Faour, 14, was also killed in the clash.

A 19-year-old Palestinian youth was shot to death in central Nablus in Thursday’s demonstration, and on the same day another 11-year-old boy was fatally wounded in the head in a disturbance in the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday, a 17-year-old youth was killed and 24 others were wounded by army gunfire in daylong clashes at the Jabaliya refugee camp and at three other locations in the Gaza Strip.

Three other Palestinians, including a man and his daughter, were wounded Friday in continuing unrest at Jabaliya.