12 Killed in Palestinian Battles With Israeli Forces

Palestinian and Israeli forces fought pitched battles with guns, stones and fire Saturday in clashes that raged across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and left hopes for peace in the Middle East in bloody shambles.

At least 12 Palestinians were killed and more than 500 injured in the third day of violence sparked by the visit of a right-wing Jewish politician to one of the holiest and most sensitive religious sites in Jerusalem. It was the worst fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in years.

And it did not seem likely to end quickly. Emotionally charged funerals were scheduled for today, and Arabs who live in Israel announced a general protest strike in sympathy with their Palestinian brothers. A coalition of all major Palestinian factions called for an escalation Monday, a date they regard as the anniversary of Saladin’s liberation of Jerusalem from the Crusaders nearly 900 years ago.

In Gaza, near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, and in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, the fighting Saturday escalated into fierce gun battles between Israeli troops and Palestinian police and civilians. Most of the fatalities occurred there, including the deaths of three Palestinian policemen. Israeli forces brought in armored cars and helicopters and fired an antitank missile at Palestinian security forces in Gaza.

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Rami Durra, was among the dead in Gaza. He and his father, apparently caught in the cross-fire, could be seen crouched behind a concrete block, flat against a wall.

“Don’t shoot!” the father, Jamal, screamed as he tried to shield the boy, according to witnesses. But Rami was killed, and Jamal then slumped over, wounded.

Bassam Bilbeisi, an ambulance driver who tried to rescue the pair, also was shot to death. A second ambulance driver was wounded.

Six Israeli soldiers were injured in the clashes, the army said. Two were killed earlier last week in separate incidents.

At midafternoon Saturday, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, chief of staff of the Israeli army, said he had negotiated a truce with top Palestinian security officials. But it collapsed within minutes with renewed fighting in Gaza, the scene throughout the day of the most intense confrontations.

Israeli officials blamed Saturday’s riots--which stretched the length and breadth of Palestinian territory--on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, and they demanded that he restore calm. But Arafat left town, flying to Egypt for consultations there.

Later, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak spoke by telephone with Arafat, urging his “personal and immediate intervention” to squelch violence that threatened to spiral out of control.

Scenes reminiscent of the intifada, the Palestinians’ 1987-93 uprising against military occupation, were replayed in a dozen towns throughout the day. Chanting “We will fight for Jerusalem with our blood and our souls!” thousands of Palestinians marched through streets, burned tires and hurled stones and chunks of concrete at Israeli forces, who responded with volleys of rubber-coated bullets and, in some instances, live ammunition.

The three days of violence came after actions by Ariel Sharon, a former general and right-wing Israeli opposition leader reviled in the Arab world as the architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which cost thousands of Arab lives. On Thursday, Sharon led a heavily guarded delegation onto the sacred Old City compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Arabs as the Haram al Sharif.

Ex-General’s Visit Seen as Defiling Muslim Site

Palestinians claimed that he had defiled the site, and a deadly chain reaction was set in motion. Though Palestinians were blaming Sharon, it was also clear that a deep repository of Arab anger and frustration had been tapped.

“Sharon is one reason,” said Issam Ahmed, a well-dressed photo lab technician who had come to watch the demonstrations on the northern edge of the West Bank city of Ramallah. “But the more pressure on us, the more we will explode.”

Ahmed, 43, echoed the general pessimism when he said the prospects for peace are doomed.

“Do you think there is a peace process? ‘Peace’ is between the leaders, and here on the land, there is no peace,” he said. “Do you see peace?”

He waved his arm toward a line of burning tires, their thick black smoke filling the air, that formed the barricade between a surging crowd of Palestinians and an Israeli army patrol that had taken up positions outside a small hotel. The soldiers crouched behind the open doors of their jeeps, periodically shooting in the direction of the demonstrators, who used slingshots to toss rocks and Molotov cocktails. The crossing is a frequent hot spot because the road on which the hotel sits leads to an Israeli military base.

A group of Palestinian American teenagers of high school age was among the demonstrators. Most said that they split their time between the U.S. and a land that they hope will become the independent state of Palestine. The boys, who looked more hip-hop than intifada, said they were fed up with the way Arabs have been treated.

Nader Nasser, 18, a sometime resident of San Bernardino, said he had joined Saturday’s stone-throwing to assert that Al Aqsa mosque is for Arabs only, after he heard that “a Jewish guy” had attempted to enter it.

“It doesn’t help that much, but it shows we are real men and we have our rights,” Nasser said. “When the Jews stop fighting, we stop fighting.”

John Rashid--another 18-year-old from San Bernardino, who is spending a year here--said that he was “just chilling” with his “homies” and that while Palestinian independence is all well and good, he was not too interested in this particular fight.

“If it was a fair fight, AK-47 to AK-47, sure,” he said. “But rocks to guns? Forget it.”

The Palestinian health minister, Riad Zanoun, said at a news conference in Gaza that 12 Palestinians were killed Saturday, bringing to 19 the two-day toll. He said 523 Palestinians were injured, several seriously, including the 20-year-old son of the governor of Nablus. Clashes were continuing as he spoke, so the total seemed likely to rise.

Many here wondered how peace talks, already stymied precisely over rival claims to Jerusalem, could survive being battered by this new outbreak of violence after months of relative calm.

In the past, such explosions have sometimes served as a catalyst to bring the two sides together as they realize the dire consequences of the failure to negotiate. But mutual recriminations were bitter Saturday.

A senior aide to Arafat, Nabil Shaath, accused the Israelis of “premeditated murder.” Israel’s acting foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, accused Arafat of “riding the tiger of violence” and warned that the Palestinian leader was playing a dangerous game.

Barak, in his conversation with Arafat, warned against thinking that violence would “serve as a negotiating tool,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

The violence this time also centered on the immensely symbolic Jerusalem, the key point of contention that has thus far blocked a final settlement to 52 years of Arab-Israeli conflict. By all accounts, the peace process had already moved into its final stage, with time running out for the ailing Arafat, the politically imperiled Barak and the almost-lame-duck President Clinton.

“This should not be the situation between two sides who are negotiating peace,” Barak’s senior advisor, Danny Yatom, told Israeli radio Saturday.

Violence Blamed on Palestinian Leaders

Israeli officials said the violence was orchestrated by Palestinian leaders, who would have to rein in the crowds. Palestinian radio and television provided daylong, live and often emotional coverage of the bloodshed, which the Israelis likened to incitement. The Israelis noted that Palestinian police rarely intervened Saturday to stop clashes and that, in Gaza and Nablus, they even joined in.

“The key is in the hands of the Palestinians,” said Mofaz, the army commander.

Sharon’s trip to the Temple Mount was being portrayed in many Palestinian homes as an aggressive attempt by a Jew to trespass on Al Aqsa mosque. And while Sharon did not attempt to enter Al Aqsa itself, the reaction to his presence had to have been predictable.

Still, Barak made no attempt to prevent the visit, the prime minister’s aides said Saturday night, because he did not wish to interfere with “every Jew’s right” to access to the Temple Mount. Doing so would also have handed political ammunition to Sharon, who is determined to oust Barak from office and would have used a ban on such a visit to claim that Barak had lost control over the holiest site in Judaism.

The police also could have vetoed Sharon’s plan but opted not to, commander Yehuda Vilk said, because they believed that they could handle any trouble.

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Times special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza contributed to this report.