Israelis March Through West Bank, Gaza

Hundreds of Israelis guarded by soldiers hiked and drove through the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Friday in a symbolic exercise of Jewish rights in the occupied lands.

“This is the best answer to Arab efforts to prevent the Jews from traveling in the Land of Israel,” said Shai Ezor, 18, one of 20 right-wing activists who walked, flanked by border guards, through Jerusalem’s Old City.

The marches were aimed partly at the Israeli government, criticized by settlers for failing to crush an 18-month-old Palestinian uprising or to protect the 70,000 Jewish residents of the occupied territories.

Organizers said there were no clashes with Palestinians, who see the hikes as provocations.

The marchers participated in 40 demonstrations organized by the settler movement Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful). The army ordered that the hikers avoid isolated Palestinian villages and be guarded by military patrols.

About 20 soldiers of the elite Golani Brigade landed by helicopter to stop a like number of men and boys from making an unescorted hike into Battir, a village near Bethlehem.

“This is a minority creating trouble,” said Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna, head of the army’s central command. He spoke to reporters after alighting from the helicopter about a mile from the village.

“If we have to arrest them, we’ll arrest them,” he said. “We won’t let them go anywhere.”

The hikers, members of American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane’s militant Kach Party, carried automatic rifles, knives, clubs and party flags with a fist set in the Star of David. They did not resist the military’s orders and headed back to Jerusalem.

The marches followed recent clashes between settlers and Arab villagers in which at least two Palestinians have been shot dead and a lone Jewish hiker was fatally stabbed.

Former West Bank military administrator Ephraim Sneh told Army Radio: “The problem is not whether there is a right to hike--the right exists. The question is whether a person who is wise, responsible and self-controlled chooses to exercise it.”

The army sealed off the main West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus, declaring them closed military zones. Troops also re-routed some hikes to keep settlers out of the center of Arab villages.

While no clashes were reported, a Reuters photographer who followed hikers near the village of Usarin, in the northern West Bank, said Arab villagers whistled and jeered from afar.

The army cancelled all leave in the West Bank to guard the hikers. A unit of soldiers led by an officer accompanied each group while commanders crisscrossed the area in helicopters.

In Jerusalem, Arab shoppers looked on in sullen silence as hikers, led by a muscular young couple in shorts bearing Israeli flags, entered the historic Jaffa Gate and walked past the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the heart of the Arab market.

The hikers caused a human traffic jam as they stopped in the narrow alleys of the market at a plaque where a Jewish religious student was stabbed to death by a Palestinian two years ago.

“You have to push people not to be afraid,” said guide Aharon Pick as his group was locked in a crush of Arabs in the market. “This is our Jerusalem, our capital.”

Meanwhile, general strikes were held in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Al Birah to protest Israel’s deportation Thursday of eight Palestinians accused of helping lead the Palestinian rebellion.