Palestinian Dies in Clash on Anniversary of Uprising

Palestinians clashed with soldiers and staged a general strike today on the first anniversary of their uprising against Israeli rule. One protester was fatally shot in the heart.

The army imposed curfews in Gaza refugee camps and blocked off two of the largest cities on the occupied West Bank.

Yussef Mohammed Sbaith, 17, died of a bullet wound in the heart after soldiers opened fire on stone-throwing youths in the West Bank village of Kafr Rai, according to officials at a hospital in nearby Jenin.

An army spokesman said the teen-ager was killed when soldiers opened fire after meeting “violent resistance” from Palestinians during an arrest sweep.

Sbaith was the 320th Palestinian killed since the uprising began Dec. 8, 1987, against Israel’s 21-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Eleven Israelis also have died.

Palestinians responded to today’s call for a two-day general strike by shutting down stores and other businesses throughout the occupied lands, home to 1.5 million Palestinians.

Soldiers barred entry or exit from Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem on the West Bank.

The army imposed curfews on all eight Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, confining more than 250,000 people to their homes indefinitely.

Residents of Gaza City’s Shejayeh section said Israeli troops ordered a curfew over loudspeakers after a firebomb was thrown at an Israeli jeep.

In Bethlehem and Nablus, troops ordered residents out of their houses to paint over graffiti and forced teen-agers to tear down outlawed Palestinian flags.

Many slogans mirrored differences over PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s latest statement on the recent declaration of independence by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s parliament-in-exile that also implicitly recognized Israel.

“What do you want, Israel, after recognition?” said one slogan in Bethlehem signed by Arafat’s mainstream PLO faction Fatah.

Opposite views appeared in graffiti signed by the fundamentalist Muslim group Hamas, or Zeal, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist PLO faction. “No concessions, not even an inch of Palestine,” was scrawled on a wall in Nablus.