2 Arabs Killed in Gaza as Uprising Enters 2nd Year

Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip on Saturday and more than a dozen were injured as violence flared again--after the relatively quiet one-year anniversary Friday of the Arab uprising.

The Israeli military said that a 16-year-old youth was shot dead after he tossed a firebomb at soldiers in occupied Gaza City, and a Palestinian prisoner who stabbed a guard also was shot dead.

Arab sources said that at least 15 Palestinians were shot and wounded in various clashes with Israeli soldiers Saturday.

And in a statement issued in Cyprus, PLO leader Yasser Arafat told Palestinians: “You are recording a new victory in the march toward liberation with every daybreak.

“As we near victory, we must realize that the most ferocious and bloody confrontations occur in the last quarter of an hour before peace.”

Arafat made no mention of his recent statements suggesting that the Palestine Liberation Organization has accepted the existence of Israel.

The Israelis had placed a two-day curfew on Gaza’s 650,000 residents during the anniversary of the intifada , as the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories is known in Arabic. The ban was lifted in Gaza City on Saturday morning but was continued in the refugee camps.

In one of the fatal incidents, Hosni Abu Sido was killed when he and fellow youths threw gasoline-filled bottles at soldiers on patrol, according to Israeli authorities.

“The lives of the soldiers were in danger,” said a military spokesman, “and the commander of the patrol opened fire. The boy who was killed was clearly the one who threw a Molotov cocktail.”

The spokesman said one soldier was slightly wounded in the attack.

In the second, unrelated incident, the Israeli military said a prisoner in a Gaza detention center, Abdallah abu Mahruka, attacked a guard with a homemade knife while exercising in Shati Prison.

Another guard shot and killed the prisoner, the military spokesman said.

Nearly 300 Palestinians, seven Israeli Jews and one Israeli Arab have been killed since the uprising began a year ago.