Two more Palestinian youths were killed in violent clashes with Israeli security forces Monday.
A 17-year-old was shot dead by Israel Defense Force soldiers in Anabta, a West Bank town on the Tulkarm-Nablus road. A second youth was killed later in Nablus by the IDF.
The latest casualties brought the death toll to five since last Friday, when the Palestinian uprising entered its eighth month.
Israeli military sources blamed the new outburst of violence on agitators who urged Palestinian youths to leave their classrooms Monday morning and confront Israeli soldiers in the streets.
Classes had just resumed, following a fiveday shutdown of Arab schools by the Israeli authorities precisely to prevent incidents of this kind.
The youngsters, inflamed by Palestinian activists, attacked IDF patrols with stones in various parts of the West Bank. In Anabta, Israeli soldiers came under a hail of rocks and, believing their lives were in danger, opened fire on the attackers, an IDF source said.
There was a similar occurrence in Nablus, according to the source.
In response to the disturbances, the West Bank civil administration immediately shut down six schools in the territory whose students allegedly took part in the attacks. They will remain closed until the end of the school year, the authorities said, adding that other schools will be shut down if their students engage in disturbances.
RECRUITING ISRAELI ARABS
The authorities reportedly have begun recruiting Israeli Arabs to serve in local police forces in the West Bank as replacements for Palestinians who have resigned. So far, they have gotten 70 volunteers.
This is a departure from established practice, since Israeli Arabs do not serve in the security forces.
Premier Yitzhak Shamir visited Kfar Etzion in the West Bank, south of Jerusalem, Monday evening. He assured Jewish leaders that settlements in the territory will not be affected by any political solution of the Middle East conflict.
Stones were thrown at three Egged buses in East Jerusalem on Monday, shattering the windshield of one of them. No one was hurt. Two Arabs were arrested.
Jerusalem police, meanwhile, interrogated Sheik Mohammad Fayez Jamal, deputy head of the Wakf, the Moslem Religious Trust, in the East Jerusalem police station on Monday.
He is suspected of incitement to riot in the Old City last week, forcing suspension of an archaeological dig there. It involved excavation of an ancient water tunnel leading from the Western Wall, under the Temple Mount, to the Via Dolorosa, in the heart of the Moslem Quarter.
The police want to know Jamal’s role in warnings, broadcast over loudspeakers mounted on the minarets of mosques, that Jews were attempting to dig their way into the Temple Mount.
The broadcasts triggered attacks on the archaeological workers and rioting in the Moslem Quarter.
The Temple Mount, on which the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock stand, is the third holiest site of the Islamic faith. Jews are barred from worshiping there by government decree.
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