Hebron Again Flash Point for Arab Cause

Almost every day, Nassim rises in the home he shares with his grandfather, shakes off the old man’s entreaties and heads out the door to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers.

A slight 18-year-old with close-cropped reddish hair, Nassim says he tries not to be late, rushing some days to reach the gathering point on Shalala Street before 10 a.m.

He feels an obligation to the Palestinian cause, he says, and to the friends who might be forced to start without him--collecting the smooth round stones that make the best projectiles and finding empty soft drink bottles to fill with gasoline.

“It’s my duty,” he said solemnly. “Like a job, really.”

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For almost a week, the heart of this divided city has been the scene of daily clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths, who say they are incensed about a drawing that portrayed Islam’s prophet Muhammad as a pig.

A 25-year-old Jewish woman, caught with the fliers in her car, was indicted this week on charges of criminally offending religious sensibilities and supporting a terror organization.

In Nablus, a crowd of several thousand protested the drawing Friday at a rally organized by the militant Islamic group Hamas. The demonstrators burned an effigy of a Jewish settler, and a Hamas leader called for a new wave of anti-Israeli violence to avenge the prophet’s “humiliation.”

In Hebron, temporarily sealed off by Israel to quiet the unrest, clashes broke out on two small streets near several enclaves of Jewish settlers. By midday, though, only a few dozen Palestinians seemed to be directly involved in the stone-throwing.

Medical workers operating a makeshift clinic behind a gas station said about 20 Palestinians were injured. No Israelis were reported hurt, although a soldier was seen limping after a homemade pipe bomb exploded near him.

Earlier in the week, undercover Israeli border police shocked the Hebron demonstrators by disguising themselves as Palestinians, mingling with the crowd and then arresting four young men. The Israelis said they acted because Palestinian police were doing little to stop the violence.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also accused Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority of instigating or failing to stop the riots. The authority has responded with conflicting statements. Arafat denied the accusation, but Col. Jibril Rajoub, who heads the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in the West Bank, has said his men will not intervene until Israel fulfills all commitments made in the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.

On Friday, according to several witnesses, Rajoub’s men tried at first to stop demonstrators but left after the Israelis began shooting rubber-coated metal bullets. Later, two security officers monitored the action from a black Land Rover but made no attempt to calm the situation.

That suited Nassim just fine. “It’s my duty as a Palestinian to come and confront the soldiers and make life hard for them,” he said, gazing down Shalala Street toward the Israeli troops visible on a nearby rooftop.

As he spoke, the sound of a shot echoed through the narrow streets. One of the soldiers guarding a Jewish enclave farther down had fired a rubber-coated bullet. A shout went up from the crowd, along with a series of whistles. Someone was hit.

Four youths, half-dragging, half-carrying another between them, ran up to the clinic, screaming at the crowd to stand back. The boy’s shirt was stained red from a wound in his head. They dumped him on a plastic pad on the ground, where a medic bound his head, then raced him into an ambulance.

Nassim said his mother, afraid for his safety, used to lock him in the house to keep him from going to demonstrations. Now, he said, his grandfather asks him not to go but he does anyway.

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The violence--or at least his role in it--is not orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority, Nassim said. No one contacts him to turn up the next day; he and a few friends just arrange to meet at a certain time.

“But it’s not organized,” interjected a traffic policeman listening closely at the edge of the circle. “It’s the youth who get upset and want to protest.”

But one man, who teaches sports at a local high school, said the teenagers were being used. “Maybe Israel or the Palestinians need this city to stay like this,” the teacher said. “What they’re doing is not clear, but the real victims are the children. Both sides are using them for political reasons.”

The Palestinians, he speculated, want to keep the pressure on Israel, hoping for concessions when the stalled peace talks resume. The Israelis, he asserted, may be looking for a reason to divide the city further, creating a buffer zone between Israeli and Palestinian areas.

Hebron is nearly always the flash point between Palestinians and Israelis. It is the only major Palestinian city where Jewish settlers, guarded by Israeli soldiers, live among the Arab population. And it is one of the few contact points for demonstrators who want to act out their anger, confront the Israelis and attract news coverage.

In March and April, Palestinians rioted across the West Bank, enraged that Israel had launched a new Jewish housing project in disputed East Jerusalem. Frustration has grown in the months since, with peace negotiations broken off and little contact between Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Two weeks ago, riots broke out over the decision in the U.S. Congress to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Clinton administration opposes the move because it would recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem. Palestinians were outraged over the vote, and, as usual, took to Hebron’s streets.

This week, it was the offending caricature. “Nobody is going to let anyone insult his religion and stay home,” said Nassim’s friend Ala-din, also 18. “We have to come out.”