Palestinian Man Slain in Clash With Israelis

A Palestinian university student was killed during clashes between Arabs and Israeli troops near the West Bank town of Ramallah on Saturday, the 10th day of violent protests against an Israeli settlement in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

Palestinian police alleged that Israeli forces opened fire with live ammunition on stone-throwing demonstrators, but Israel denied the charge after an initial investigation.

The death of the 20-year-old--the first fatality in the recent wave of clashes--raised fears of further bloodshed during expected mass protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip today.

Palestinians have organized the demonstrations to mark Land Day, which commemorates a 1976 incident in which six Arab villagers in Israel were shot by border police during a protest over expropriated land. Fatah, the political organization of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, has called on its people to rally against the construction of a new Israeli settlement on a Jerusalem hill called Har Homa in Hebrew and Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic.

“I think [the killing] is very dangerous,” Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Fatah, told Israeli television Saturday. “I think this will explode everything.”

Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and security cooperation were frozen after the housing project’s groundbreaking and a suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv cafe on March 21 that killed three Israelis. U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross ended two days of emergency talks in the region Friday saying that halting the violence is a prerequisite for renewing negotiations.

The Palestinians responded that the Israeli decision to go ahead with the controversial settlement is responsible for the violence.

“Netanyahu’s orders and decisions are escalating the situation in the whole area,” Arafat said.

Palestinian police officials said they have standing orders to try to prevent violence between demonstrators and Israeli soldiers and that no new orders had been issued in the wake of the shooting.

Ramallah police and hospital officials said that Abdullah Khalil Abdullah Salah was shot in the chest with live ammunition during a confrontation at dusk at the southern entrance to Ramallah, a Palestinian self-rule enclave near Jerusalem.

A Palestinian police spokesman in Ramallah said, “The Israeli soldiers killed the youth.” He said live ammunition had been fired.

Ramallah Government Hospital surgeon Mohammed Eidi said Salah was shot in the heart with live ammunition and there was shrapnel in his body. He said another gunshot victim, 19-year-old Jamal Hamdan, remained in intensive care on a respirator.

Israeli officials, however, denied that their troops had fired live ammunition.

“It appears the Palestinian killed . . . was not hit by live ammunition. The force that dispersed the disturbance did not use live ammunition, but tear gas and rubber bullets,” the Israeli army said in an official statement today.

It was not clear why Israeli security forces might have fired live ammunition after more than a week of using mostly rubber bullets and tear gas to control rock-throwing youths.

Israeli soldiers are under standing orders to let Palestinian police disperse crowds and to use nonlethal means to fight back except in life-threatening situations.

In clashes around the West Bank on Saturday, at least 24 other Palestinians were wounded when Israeli troops fired rubber bullets at demonstrators throwing stones. Twelve others in Ramallah were hospitalized for tear-gas inhalation.

Times researcher Muhammed El-Hasan contributed to this report from Ramallah.