One Arab was killed and nine were wounded as violence continued in the Gaza Strip and West Bank Monday. But Israeli authorities said the situation in the administered territories was relatively calm and under control after a week of rioting that some officials described as a civil revolt.
The disturbances of the past week are acknowledged to have been the worst in recent years and politicians of the Labor Party and Likud are each accusing the other of responsibility for allowing conditions to deteriorate so precipitously.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department expressed “serious concern” Monday over the situation and blamed the trouble on the lack of a peace agreement in the region and Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
At the United Nations, meanwhile, the Security Council prepared to meet Monday night for the second time in four days, to discuss the situation.
While Israeli authorities sought to ease tensions, Arabs rioted Monday in the northern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis. An unidentified Arab of about 25 was shot to death after he attacked an Israel Defense Force patrol with a gasoline bomb. Four other rioters were wounded.
MAXIMUM RESTRAINT ORDERED
The IDF has been under orders since late last week to exercise maximum restraint. An investigation into the Khan Yunis incident was promptly held and the soldiers were found to have “acted properly” in the circumstances.
In a bizarre aftermath, the dead man’s body was snatched from the hospital morgue, displayed in the streets by demonstrators and returned to the morgue.
Elsewhere in the Gaza strip, soldiers at a roadblock wounded four young Arabs who attacked them with rocks.
One Arab was slightly wounded Monday in a clash with the IDF in the West Bank. Youths hurled rocks at army patrols in the narrow alleys of the Nablus casbah. They were dispersed by tear gas. Meanwhile, a curfew was lifted at the Balata refugee camp near Nablus early Monday, only to be re-imposed later when rioting broke out in the camp.
Officials of Israel’s civil administration in the territories met with local Arab leaders to try to calm the unrest. But Arab municipality officials apparently have little control over what happens in the refugee camps where pro-Palestine Liberation Organization activists are said to be the source of unrest.
The authorities are hoping to convince merchants in the territories to reopen their shops, which have been closed for several days, and to prevail upon Arab workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to return to their jobs in Israel.
About 60,000 Arabs from the territories have failed to show up for work in Israel, according to a report Monday in Al Hamishmar. The paper said the effects of the strike are felt mainly at construction sites and in municipal services, such as street cleaning and garbage removal, in which many Arabs are employee.
LABOR, LIKUD TRADE CHARGES
Meanwhile, the coalition partners continued to clash over short-term and long-term policy in the territories. Leaders of Likud’s Herut faction accused the Labor Party of aggravating the ferment in the West Bank and Gaza by its “low profile,” “know-nothing” policies.
They claimed that “quiet and security will be restored only when it is made clear that Likud policy will be the one to determine the future of Judaea, Samaria and Gaza.”
Laborites responded sharply, charging that Likud policies were hindering any advance toward negotiations for peace.
But Premier Yitzhak Shamir got in the last word Monday. He attributed the unrest to the “defeatist reaction of certain circles” and charged that “there are those among us who believe that if we return to the 1967 borders, the Arab world will embrace us with love.” The premier spoke at a meeting of Rafi, a dissident faction that split from the Labor Party long ago when it was headed by Premier David Ben-Gurion.
A dispute arose on another front Monday. According to a report in Haaretz, Uri Porat, director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, charged that television coverage of disturbances in the territories was abetting Arab propaganda.
Porat spoke at a meeting with senior TV news department personnel. He criticized a segment of Saturday night’s newscast in which an Arab interviewee claimed that “the army is to blame for everything” and an army officer was asked repeatedly by the reporter, “if it was not possible to prevent incidents,” Haaretz reported.
The paper also said there was wide agreement at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting that the news media were “inflating” the situation in the territories.
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.
