Israeli shooting sparks rioting as tension prevails

JERUSALEM, March 12 (JTA) — The stalled peace process has created a tense atmosphere in which any incident has the potential to set off a regional explosion. A car accident in the Gaza Strip was the spark that ignited the intifada, the 1987-1993 Palestinian uprising. And this week, when Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians in a van at a West Bank roadblock near Hebron, there were warnings from Palestinian officials that a new intifada was in the making. Indeed, Tuesday’s incident at the roadblock — where it appeared that Israeli troops wrongly assessed the motives of the van’s driver — prompted rioting in the West Bank. But in a sharp contrast to 1987, there were mechanisms in place — despite the lag in negotiations — for cooperation to try to prevent tensions from escalating even further. With that in mind, the Israeli commander in the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, met with senior Palestinian security officials to discuss ways to calm the situation. But it remained unclear whether their efforts would succeed. On Thursday, more than a dozen Palestinians were wounded in a second day of clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank. Israeli security police were on high alert for possible revenge attacks in the wake of the roadblock shooting deaths. On Wednesday, at least 20 Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers, who fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing youths. That day’s clashes took place while thousands of Palestinians in the town of Dura, located near Hebron, attended the funerals of the three workers killed as they were returning home from their jobs in Israel. In Hebron, rioters threw gasoline bombs and rocks at Israeli troops. There were also riots in Dura and in the Ramallah area. Palestinian police were deployed around Dura to help restore order, and large numbers of Israeli troops were stationed in and around Hebron to quell the disturbances there. Near Ramallah, a Palestinian was wounded in the leg when a Jewish settler whose car was pelted with stones opened fire. The settler was later questioned by police. There were conflicting accounts regarding what took place at the Turkemiya roadblock on Tuesday. Israeli soldiers manning the roadblock opened fire on the van after it veered toward the roadblock, causing light injuries to one soldier. The troops later said they believed the van’s driver was deliberately trying to run them over. This was denied by Palestinian officials and by a passenger in the van, who said the driver had sped up in an attempt to bypass a line of waiting cars at the roadblock. Senior Israeli army officials later admitted this was probably the case. They said that an initial inquiry also indicated that the van’s driver did not intentionally drive at the troops. “The soldiers felt that their lives were threatened, and this feeling was a bona fide one. On the other hand, I don’t think the Palestinians were involved in a terror event,” Dayan told reporters. On Thursday, Israeli officials released from detention the soldiers who killed the workers, saying they had opened fire believing that they were under attack when the van veered into them at the roadblock. Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat denounced the shooting as a “big crime against our workers who were returning from their work.” Just the same, he told reporters in the Gaza Strip that he was still committed to the peace process. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned Arafat Tuesday night to express condolences over the shootings. Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai made a similar call to Arafat on Thursday.