A full contingent of international observers arrived in the West Bank town of Hebron this week, but on their first day of monitoring duties they found themselves caught in clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers.
The unarmed 114-member observer force, recruited from Norway, Denmark and Italy, arrived in Hebron on Sunday in a convoy led by the Israel Defense Force.
They were accompanied by a busload of members of the foreign news media.
Shortly after the observers arrived, Palestinians protesting the presence of Jewish settlers in Hebron and nearby Kiryat Arba began throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.
The soldiers responded by firing tear gas into the crowd.
The observers, caught in the confrontation, soon found themselves choking on the tear gas.
“I guess we’ll have to get used to carrying onions around with us,” an Italian member of the observer force later said on Israel Radio, referring to a means to counter the effects of the gas.
The presence of observers, known officially as the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, was agreed to by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in late March following the Feb. 25 slaying of at least 29 Palestinians at a Hebron mosque by an Israeli settler.
The agreement on the presence of an international team of observers had paved the way for the resumption of Israeli-PLO negotiations, which the Palestinians had suspended immediately after the Hebron massacre.
The observers will be in place for an initial three-month period, a mandate that is renewable for additional three-month periods.
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