Bullets, Blood and Theories at W. Bank Hotel

For several hours Monday, the violence seemed almost routine: Palestinian protesters threw rocks and gasoline bombs at Israeli soldiers on the northern edge of this West Bank city, and the Israelis hit back, firing tear gas, concussion grenades and rubber bullets.

Then, with frightening speed, everything changed.

Several rounds of live fire, apparently from Palestinian police, sent a group of civilians hurrying toward a small hotel nearby, seeking refuge.

About 100 yards from safety, Maher Abukhater, a Palestinian reporter working with The Times, was hit from behind, shot through the left shoulder. Amid gunshots, journalists and then Israeli soldiers carried Abukhater, 44, to the hotel driveway, where he lay unconscious and bleeding for long minutes before an Israeli ambulance could approach and evacuate him. Late Monday, he was in stable condition at a Jerusalem hospital.

Inside and outside the seven-story hotel, the scene was one of chaos. At times, the firing--single shots, machine-gun bursts and lower, heavier reverberations--seemed to come from all sides of the building.

Israeli army snipers holed up in the top-floor restaurant, firing through its shattered glass windows. Palestinian snipers--including police officers and civilians, witnesses said--shot back at the Israelis from nearby buildings.

About 40 civilians, including many Palestinians and a handful of Americans and Europeans, were trapped in the New City Inn for more than four hours Monday. The Israeli soldiers numbered more than a dozen, positioning themselves in the restaurant and near the lobby windows and door. Israeli helicopters hovered nearby.

Hotel guests, passersby and journalists milled about the ground-floor lobby, approaching the windows periodically to look out, then crouching against interior walls as the shooting drew close. In quiet moments, waiters served Arabic coffee, Cokes and orange drinks from the hotel bar, and friendly clerks at the reception desk offered to recharge cellular phones.

One man dozed fitfully, sitting upright in a wicker chair. Another calmly tamped his pipe and kept an eye on television news accounts of the battle, the fiercest in a day of violent clashes throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip to mark the anniversary of the establishment of Israel in 1948. Palestinians call the day the Nakba--the Catastrophe--and mark it with demonstrations.

Situated on the dividing line between Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, the hotel has served as a backdrop for several previous clashes. But manager Borhan Bani Odeh said the damage from Monday’s battle far exceeded the rest, with broken glass or furniture in many of its 33 rooms.

At midafternoon, Wafieh Ahmed, an Egyptian soil specialist, sat in a corner of the lobby, looking woeful. A guest at the hotel, Ahmed said the gun battle was forcing him to miss a long-planned meeting with other soil experts.

Marco Rettig, a young German working with a Palestinian human rights group, said he felt foolish for being there at all. He was close by, he said, checking figures at the Palestinian Central Statistics Bureau, when he heard the commotion and wandered over, hoping to see a little action.

“But not like this,” Rettig said.

As the day wore on, others settled into cushioned chairs and tried to explain why things had suddenly turned so menacing. The Palestinians were deeply frustrated with the peace process and with Israel’s detention of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, several said; an explosion was inevitable, they added.

Suddenly, a young man burst through the front door, seeking refuge.

Mohammed Nazzal, 21, said he was a shopkeeper in Ramallah and was trying to reach his home near the hotel. For more than an hour, he had crawled on his stomach, waving a white T-shirt over his head.

Nazzal said that on his way in, he had seen Palestinian police and civilians firing toward the hotel and predicted that the confrontations would continue for several days.

“It is very bad when you see young people, children, get injured,” he said. “We don’t want to see bloodshed anymore, but the Israelis are not giving us our rights. They are pressuring people, and now the peace process is almost blocked.”

Minutes later, evidently desperate to reach his wife, Nazzal ran out of the building and was shot in the stomach. Carried back inside, he lay bandaged on the lobby floor, asking God to save his life. He was evacuated by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and later listed in moderate condition.

And then it was over.

The Israeli soldiers gathered near the doorway, and then one by one they dashed across the street to waiting jeeps. The others who had been trapped inside followed suit, climbing into cars with shattered windows or bullet-pocked doors and driving away toward Jerusalem.