Two 22-year-old students at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank were killed by Israeli soldiers and border police Thursday in an attempt to break up a riot in which a border policeman and an Israeli civilian were struck by rocks. Eleven students were injured.
Military sources said the soldiers fired into the air and then at the feet of the rioters who continued to hurl stones and bottles of gasoline. There were also riots Thursday in nearby Ramallah, north of Jerusalem. Local merchants observed a full commercial strike.
Unrest has been endemic at Bir Zeit. Disturbances escalated on November 29, the 39th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly’s decision to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. They continued for several days, related apparently to the upsurge of fighting between Palestinians and the Amal Shiite militia in south Lebanon.
Thursday’s outburst was seen as a reaction to Israeli intervention on the side of Amal. An Israel Navy gunboat shelled Palestinian positions near the Lebanese port of Sidon for two hours Thursday.
The students were apparently also incensed by Israel Defense Force roadblocks set up on the approaches to the campus during the past 10 days which made them late for classes.
MOST SERIOUS RIOTING IN THE CAMPUS AREA
About 400 students stoned passing cars and burned tires in the road Thursday morning. Israeli authorities arrested Dr. Salah Jawad, a professor of history at the university for allegedly inciting the students. Jawad said he was in fact trying to calm them.
Israeli officers said the rioting was the most serious ever in the campus area. Soldiers used water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets in a vain effort to disperse the rioters before they opened fire with live ammunition, an IDF spokesman said.
A university spokesman told a press conference in Jerusalem Thursday night that the unrest was due to the roadblocks. He complained that soldiers held up ambulances coming to the scene to transfer the dead and wounded to local hospitals. Student sources said the bodies of the two students fatally shot were hidden from the IDF to prevent their burial after dark. They said the IDF feared a new outburst if a funeral was held in daylight.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
