Gaza’s ‘War Day’: 3 Die, 100 Hurt : Clashes With Israeli Army Bring Heavy Toll Among Arabs

Young Jamalat Abu Lulu pondered the violence approaching her door Saturday with calm as reports of fresh deaths in nearby refugee camps circulated and an Israeli army helicopter buzzed overhead.

“The situation is getting worse and worse,” she said, fingering her “I Love Palestine” bracelet. “People are getting more and more committed.”

The 14-year-old is herself a walking showcase of violent commitment. She has been wounded three times and is something of a hero in her neighborhood inside the chock-a-block Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

Her tenacity seemed to mirror the events outside on a day when three Palestinians were shot to death during some of the fiercest confrontations in the 17-month-old Arab uprising. It was a day designated by Palestinian rebel leaders as one “of war and confrontation,” and the violence reminded onlookers of the chaotic first months of the uprising, when mass demonstrations often ended in violence and large numbers of casualties.

The toll of wounded Saturday reached single-day levels never before seen in the Gaza Strip--at least 100, according to U.N. officials.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin flew into the Gaza Strip by helicopter to survey the violence. The Gaza area had been declared “pacified” by Israeli military officials just a month ago.

The unrest capped a bloody month of Ramadan, a time when devout Muslims fast and pray to commemorate the period when the Prophet Mohammed received the word of God. At least 40 Palestinians died in clashes with troops during the month, mostly in the Gaza Strip and the southern part of the West Bank, where Islamic fundamentalism is strong.

In the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, a procession of several hundred congregants from a mosque tried to converge on a cemetery where they planned to hold memorial services for Palestinian dead, witnesses said.

The crowd chanted “We redeem our martyrs with blood and soul!” and “We want our state!” then threw stones at observing Israeli troops. An Israeli helicopter launched tear gas and soldiers fired into the crowd, using marble-sized metal projectiles, plastic bullets and full-metal rounds.

Word of the unrest in Nusseirat spread to other refugee camps, and crowds took to the streets, putting burning tires in roadways and pelting army jeeps with stones if they tried to enter their neighborhoods.

“It’s getting worse than ever before,” said Jorgen Rosenbal, director of Ahli Hospital, run by the Anglican Church.

Ambulances pulled up frequently to the hospital, bringing patients with a variety of wounds, especially to the face and upper body. Of the 55 victims treated by 1:30 p.m., most suffered some injury from bullets, while some had been hit with the metal marbles and others had been bruised from beatings, doctors said. Muslim imams broadcast calls for blood donations from loudspeakers atop minarets.

Mohammed Abdullah Zakout, 35, and Raid Muanes, 20, were shot dead in Nusseirat, and Id Alama Saud, 22, was killed in the Khan Yunis camp in Gaza.

At some point, Palestinians in Khan Yunis stabbed a suspected collaborator to death, bringing the day’s fatal toll to four.

The latest leaflet circulated by the leadership of the uprising had called for Saturday to be a day of “war and confrontation.” So had published instructions from the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, which commands a large following in Gaza.

Follower of Hamas

Abu Lulu is a follower of Hamas; she wears a modest black cloak of the type fundamentalist women wear and believes that all of what once was Palestine, Israel included, should form a single state under Islamic law.

Saturday morning, Abu Lulu was sure the violence would soon arrive in Rafah. “I myself will join up when we hear the call,” she assured visitors.

The slightly built girl makes no bones about her role in the intifada, as the uprising is called by Arabs. Unlike some Palestinians who claim to have been shot while out shopping, Abu Lulu says she was injured confronting the soldiers.

She has been hit by rubber-encased bullets, metal marbles and plastic bullets in the thigh, arm and shoulder. She said she received the latter injury trying to stop soldiers from beating a neighborhood boy.

The fact that she is a girl in a male-dominated society impedes her none at all.

“This is a revolution. Are girls supposed to stand around and just let the boys suffer?” she asked.

Fled Home in 1948

Abu Lulu’s family fled their home in Beersheba, a desert town east of the Gaza Strip, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Forty-one years later, the younger generation has built a record of combat against the Israelis; her eldest brother, Farid, 21, is spending time in jail for organizing stone throwers to attack soldiers.

Three other brothers have served short terms in prison; two are in hiding and a third is recuperating from a chest wound.

Only on occasion does a fancy surface that might seem appropriate to someone Abu Lulu’s age. When asked who here heroes are, she answered: “(PLO leader) Yasser Arafat and (pop singer) Michael Jackson.”