A 15-year-old Jewish youth and a 24-year-old Arab stabbed each other during an altercation in the Beit Yisrael quarter of Jerusalem Tuesday afternoon.
The Arab, apparently the attacker, fled but was captured in the Musrara quarter later. Both youths were hospitalized. Police are investigating the incident.
Rioting, stone-throwing and tire-burning were reported in various parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Force shot and wounded a resident of the Khan Yunis refugee camp who attacked a soldier when an IDF patrol ordered residents to remove burning tires that blocked the entrance to the camp. Khan Yunis, a large town in the southern portion of the Gaza Strip, was placed under curfew.
The IDF is investigating the shooting death Tuesday morning of another Khan Yunis resident. He is believed to have been killed by Arabs who suspected him of collaborating with the Israeli authorities.
The body of a Gaza Strip resident was found near Beit Hanun Tuesday morning. The circumstances of his death are unknown.
The IDF also is investigating the shooting Monday night of an Arab resident of Tubas village, in the Samaria region of the West Bank. He was apparently shot by soldiers.
A young East Jerusalem Arab was ordered held in custody for 10 days by a Jerusalem magistrate court Tuesday. He is suspected of conspiring with another youth, who also is in custody, to murder an Arab believed to be a collaborator.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Tuesday that permission given recently to IDF soldiers to open fire on individuals throwing Molotov cocktails has been granted to Jewish civilians.
Rabin briefed the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He stressed that firearms could be used only against the person actually throwing the gasoline bomb, not for firing into crowds.
Jewish settlers have been demanding the same permission. They can open fire only when they believe their lives are threatened, Rabin said.
He reported to the committee that some 3,000 West Bank Palestinians are currently being held in military detention centers. Israel also has banned the transfer of money across the Jordan River bridges as a punitive measure against Arab rioting in the West Bank.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who favors the principle of trading territory for peace, warned Tuesday that the IDF cannot simply withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
Speaking during a visit there Peres said it would be “scandalous and a mistake just to get up and leave Gaza,” because such a move would lead to chaos such as exists in Lebanon.
Peres said he thought the best solution would be to grant autonomy in the territories or an arrangement with Jordan, which would prevent the presence of a foreign army in the Gaza Strip, but allow a non-Israeli authority to manage affairs there.
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