100 Arabs Injured by Israeli Fire in W. Bank

Israeli troops fired live ammunition at a crowd of Arab protesters here Saturday in clashes that injured about 100 Palestinians and dealt yet another blow to Israeli-Palestinian relations a day after a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv cafe.

Three women and the Palestinian bomber died in the Friday afternoon blast, which injured dozens of other people, including 26 who remained hospitalized Saturday. Still in question was whether the peace process, already paralyzed by recent sharp differences between the two sides, would also become a casualty.

There was no word on when, or if, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat might meet to calm the escalating tensions. Arafat flew to Oman and then Pakistan on Saturday and was not expected to return to his Gaza Strip headquarters for several days.

Still, lower-level contacts continued between the two sides, with Israeli and Palestinian security officials meeting Saturday in an effort to restore order in volatile Hebron, a city under divided Israeli-Palestinian control.

Violence flared in the city for the second day when Israeli soldiers guarding an enclave of Jewish settlers who live among 100,000 Palestinians in the city were confronted by hundreds of angry demonstrators throwing rocks, bottles and some Molotov cocktails.

In the street battles in a downtown neighborhood known as Bab Issawiya, the Israelis fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds--the last, an army spokesman said, when the soldiers felt that their lives were in danger.

Hospital officials said three of the 100 Palestinians wounded were critically injured, including one shot in the eye and another in the neck. It was not clear whether the wounds were caused by live or rubber bullets, officials said.

Eight Israeli soldiers and police officers were slightly injured when they were struck by stones.

Israeli troops also imposed a curfew on the nearby West Bank village of Zurif, the home of suicide bomber Moussa Ghneimat. Residents were prevented from leaving their homes, and all others were kept out by Israeli soldiers at blockades on the roads leading into Zurif.

But details began to emerge about the bomber, the latest in a line of Palestinian militants to launch a suicide attack against an Israeli civilian target. Zurif residents reached by telephone painted a portrait of Ghneimat that was at once unusual and typical of those militants who choose to end their lives in the act of killing others.

Unlike previous bombers, Ghneimat was married and the father of four children, ranging in age from 8 to 1. But like many of his predecessors, he was a known sympathizer of the militant Islamic group Hamas. And both he and his older brother had spent time in Israeli jails, apparently for Hamas-related activity, a relative said.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing in an anonymous phone call to an Israeli television station Friday. Palestinian police, who have drawn harsh criticism from Israel for freeing dozens of Islamic extremists from jail, were reported to have rearrested Ibrahim Makadmeh, who allegedly was the head of the secret Hamas military cells that carried out a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel last year and who had recently been freed.

On Friday, Makadmeh exhorted a crowd of thousands at a Gaza rally to use suicide bombs, not negotiations, to deal with Israel. There was no independent confirmation that he had been arrested.

Contacted by telephone, Imad Ghneimat, a member of the same clan as the bomber, said Moussa had worked for about six months at a Tel Aviv restaurant and occasionally spent the night there with the permission of his employer. Moussa Ghneimat also had a valid work permit to enter Israel, his relative said, although an Israeli television report Saturday said he was working illegally.

The army said it had arrested 13 people from Zurif and four others from the nearby village of Nuba as part of the bombing investigation. Witnesses inside the blockaded village said those arrested included all adult members of Ghneimat’s immediate family, including his wife. She was later released.

Thaer Iklail, from the nearby village of Beit Ummar, said he was awake about 3:30 a.m. Saturday when the arrested residents of Zurif walked into his village flanked by army jeeps and soldiers.

“They have arrested all members of Hamas in this village,” Iklail said.

The witnesses also said the soldiers had sealed Ghneimat’s home, on the second floor of a building that his family owns near the Zurif mosque, and were preparing to blow it up. Blowing up the homes of suicide bombers is a common practice of the Israeli army.

Both the bombing Friday and the street battles in various West Bank communities in recent days have marked an ebb in relations between the Netanyahu government and the Palestinians.

Peace negotiations have been deadlocked by Palestinian anger over Israeli decisions to build a new Jewish neighborhood in disputed East Jerusalem and to make a relatively limited troop pullback from the West Bank.

Several Hebron residents, interviewed as they gathered Saturday on a street that marked the battle line between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters, did not hesitate to fix blame for the recent violence, including the bombing.

“We do not accept violence, if it’s done by Arabs or Israelis,” said Assad abu Munshar, 55, who sells electrical items. “But this is a reaction. They [Israeli leaders] are responsible for this.”

Abdel Rahman Samouh said Netanyahu’s leadership does not seem like a government at all but like a “nasty gang” that works against the peace process. Samouh, 50, said he and many other Palestinians were reconsidering their opposition to violent attacks against Israel.