Israeli Troops, Palestinians Skirmish; 1 Protester Killed

Israeli troops clashed repeatedly with Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Saturday as demonstrations grew in support of a hunger strike by 5,000 “security prisoners” demanding better conditions. One man was reported killed, and more than 50 people were wounded.

The fiercest clashes came, as they had through the week, in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli troops and border police wounded more than 40 people, according to an Israeli military spokesman, while dispersing protests in Gaza City and around the refugee camps at Rafah, Khan Yunis and Nusseirat.

In the farming village of Beita, about 25 miles north of Jerusalem, 23-year-old Amir Ahmed Hamayel was shot dead, the spokesman said, after residents stoned an army patrol and refused orders to halt. Three other men were wounded in the incident, the army said.

In Arab East Jerusalem, police used tear gas to disperse a march by about 600 Palestinian women in support of the prisoners. They fired tear-gas grenades again to prevent a second march up Salah el Din Street, the main thoroughfare of East Jerusalem. A youth was shot and wounded, according to police, as he tried to seize a rifle from a paramilitary border policeman.

Further casualties were reported in the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Janin as the solidarity protests continued to spread through the Israeli-occupied territories.

The widespread clashes are reminiscent of the early days of the intifada , the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule that began in December, 1987, with a 20-day hunger strike by political prisoners. And Israeli commentators are suggesting that the unrest might build into a second such protest.

More than 200 people have been injured in the past week as Israeli forces have attempted to quell the demonstrations, but the death in Beita was the first fatality.

“It was like all hell broke loose in Ramallah today,” one resident of the town said. “The clashes went on for two hours, roads were blocked and tires were burned. It was the biggest protest here in two years or more.”

Palestinian leaders are now warning Israel that the growing protests, as well as the 2-week-old hunger strike in 13 prisons, could undermine the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations in Washington. Those talks, now in recess, are due to resume Oct. 21.

“If the hunger strike continues, if the protests continue, if the casualties continue, it will be very difficult for us to return (to the talks),” Saeb Erakat, a leading member of the Palestinian delegation, commented in a weekend interview.

“We want to keep it all out of the negotiations because these are not political but humanitarian issues, but how can we when the Israelis don’t respond? If the strike is continuing as we go back (this) week, the focus of the talks will shift to the prisoners and the conditions in which they are held.”

Ghassan Khatib, another member of the delegation, said the spreading protests reflected both popular solidarity with the security prisoners held by Israel and disappointment with the peace talks.

Israel should respond quickly, Khatib argued, because the continuing solidarity demonstrations show a popular readiness, despite tough Israeli measures against them, to return to the street protests that marked the intifada.

The Israeli army is so alarmed at the increase in protests and violence that it has reversed its announced drawdown of forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to military sources, and moved reinforcements into both regions in the past week.

Although the hunger strike was launched by two Marxist factions within the Palestine Liberation Organization to protest the negotiations as much as the prisoners’ conditions, Khatib argued that the PLO leadership was again in control of “the street” and would use the issue to advantage in the talks.

Pressed on whether the PLO’s mainstream Fatah group had lost the initiative to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other factions opposed to the U.S.-mediated talks, Khatib said, “No, on the contrary--all this shows that the leadership is capable of running the street at the right time and on the right issue.

“Any pressure from the Palestinian side on legitimate issues will strengthen the Palestinian position and consequently strengthen the Palestinian delegation,” Khatib added.

Moshe Shahal, the Israeli police minister, tried Friday to negotiate an end to the strike through the prisoners’ lawyers and families, and he believed he had an agreement when, according to Israeli officials, the deal was vetoed by party cadres from the Popular Front and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine held at prisons in Nablus and Janin.

“They had much of what they wanted, and we promised we would look at several other demands as well,” a senior Israeli official said. “But then these ‘commissars’ said, ‘No, no, nyet. ‘ So, clearly, this strike has little to do with prison conditions, and a lot to do with politics.”

The striking prisoners, who have been joined by 3,000 to 4,000 Palestinians jailed on criminal charges, have taken only water and salt since Sept. 27, according to Palestinian sources. They are demanding better food and medical care, more exercise facilities and an end to extended solitary confinement. They have also accused Israeli authorities of torture.