Stones and bullets flew but no fatalities were reported in a day of wide spread violence throughout the West Bank. Five Israelis were reported injured at the end of the day. One man received a head wound from a stone hurled at his car on the Hebron road. Three of the injured were women soldiers, all of them slightly hurt.
In Bethlehem massive security forces kept nationalist university students penned up at the town’s university thus thwarting their intention to demonstrate against former President Jimmy Carter who was meeting with Major Elias Freij and local dignitaries at the town hall.
In part, the troubles appear to have been connected to Carter’s visit to East Jerusalem in the morning and Bethlehem in the afternoon. Carter was unable to see the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in East Jerusalem as planned because of the rioting. The stormiest scenes were in Hebron. Gunshots were also reported from nearby Bethlehem when cars belong to Jewish settlers were pelted by rocks.
In the East Jerusalem disturbances 13 young Arabs were detained by police and five Jewish yeshiva students who were suspected of smashing store windows in retaliation for being attacked by stone-throwing youths.
Apparently unconnected with this wave of disturbance Defense Minister Moshe Arens made a day-long visit to the West Bank, meeting with Jewish settlers and assuring them of his commitment to expanding settlement efforts. But he warned the Jewish settlers against taking the law into their own hands against local Arabs.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
