Violence Divides Palestinians

In the worst internal strife in years, Palestinian battled Palestinian on Monday as Yasser Arafat’s police opened fire on a huge rally by Islamic fundamentalists supporting alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Enraged Palestinians then stormed through Gaza Strip refugee camps, trashing police stations and other symbols of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. Suddenly, old fears of Palestinian civil war were revived by U.S. strikes on Afghanistan and Bin Laden’s linking of his struggle to that of the Palestinians.

Palestinian television Monday night issued pleas for calm and unity and warned of a complete breakdown in social order. It was the most serious challenge to Arafat’s regime since shortly after it was established seven years ago.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, streets were quiet but tense. The U.S. effort to cast its actions in Afghanistan as a strike against terrorism, not against Islam, appeared to have failed in many places, and governments were bracing for trouble.

The Gaza battle illustrated the gulf between Arafat and his Palestinian leadership, who want to side with the United States, and the Palestinian street, where anti-American sentiment is intense and Bin Laden is hailed as a leader who can defy the West.

At least three Palestinians were killed and many more wounded in the day’s violence in Gaza, which began when students from two universities marched through Gaza City, waving pictures of Bin Laden and chanting anti-American slogans. Ten policemen were injured.

At Gaza City’s main hospital, crowds chanting “Arafat is a traitor” surged to glimpse the bodies of the dead and vowed revenge.

Monday’s crackdown was the first time in the year-old Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that Arafat has acted forcefully against Islamic factions. It was also the most lethal confrontation between Palestinian Authority forces and Islamists since a 1994 clash that left 13 dead.

“It is a sad moment, and something very unexpected, to see Palestinians shooting at Palestinians,” Ismail abu Shanab, a leader of the Islamic movement Hamas in Gaza, said by telephone Monday night. “The Americans are pressuring Arafat to keep things calm here, and we are trying to criticize the Americans. That is the problem.”

Intent on keeping a lid on Palestinian opinion, police ordered television crews not to cover the demonstration, or completely barred them from Gaza. At least one crew managed to defy the order. Throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, police tried to prevent reporters from interviewing ordinary Palestinians.

By challenging the radical Hamas organization, which sponsored Monday’s rally, Arafat has entered extremely dangerous territory. The popularity of Hamas, which opposes any negotiation with Israel, has soared in the last year, while the credibility of the Palestinian Authority, which still advocates reconciliation with the Jewish state, has eroded.

The Gaza riots also test Arafat’s ability to control his populace, which has been commonly open to question here as he has intermittently attempted to enforce a cease-fire in the Palestinian conflict with Israel. His security services last weekend made an initial attempt to arrest a small number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists, whom Israel holds responsible for terrorist attacks against Jews. But violence has continued.

On Monday, a number of journalists covering the demonstration in Gaza were beaten by police, had cameras confiscated or were hauled into police headquarters, witnesses and journalists said.

The demonstration began near Gaza City’s Islamic University, a Hamas center. Protesters then marched through two central streets. Some armed demonstrators broke off and waged a running battle with police, who were firing live ammunition and tear gas. Police denied that they had shot the three victims and blamed unknown masked gunmen; they ordered the two universities closed until further notice.

In his videotape apparently prepared before but aired after the U.S.-British strikes on Afghanistan were launched Sunday, Bin Laden pledged that America would not live in peace until “peace reigns in Palestine.”

Palestinian officials, who for the most part reserved comment on the airstrikes, were eager Monday to distance themselves from Bin Laden.

“The Palestinian cause is a ready-made pretext for anyone wanting to do anything,” Marwan Kanafani, a Palestinian official, said in an interview in Ramallah.

But on the street, Palestinians said any war on terrorism had to target Israel and the United States. They said Americans themselves were terrorists for supporting Israeli attacks on Palestinians and, now, for their own attacks on Afghan civilians.

For many, Bin Laden is a hero, not for last month’s attacks in the U.S., but because he challenges American policy worldwide and Israeli policy in the Middle East. But not everyone thinks Bin Laden is the best champion for the Palestinian cause.

“How has Bin Laden helped us?” asked Ahmed Ayed, 36, an accountant who formerly lived in Kuwait. Like most Palestinians there, he had to leave because of Arafat’s support for Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Arafat apparently intends to avoid choosing the losing side again in this conflict.

“Has Bin Laden moved any of these checkpoints blocking our roads?” Ayed asked. “Has he given me food for my children? No one helps us, not Bin Laden, not Yasser Arafat.”

But Ayed also said he thought it a “shame” that a country as powerful as the United States had unleashed its military might on as pathetic a state as Afghanistan.

Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network “are not the terrorists,” said Mutasim Mousa, a 23-year-old street vendor offering blue jeans outside the main mosque in Ramallah. “The terrorists are America and Israel. Bin Laden serves the Palestinian cause 100%. If he could come here to fight, he would. And I think it will be Bin Laden who finally liberates Palestine.”

As he spoke, an undercover police officer approached the reporter and ordered her to leave. He claimed that reporters needed special permits from the Information Ministry to talk to people in the street.

An Information Ministry official later conceded that no permits were required.

“We would rather that you say there’s a ban [on journalistic coverage] than have a Palestinian say something that damages our national interests,” the official said.