Violence escalated on the West Bank today despite Defense Minister Moshe Arens’ urgings to the Palestinians to “sober up, stop supporting the PLO and make peace with Israel.”
The most serious incident occurred in Hebron where a 12-year-old Israeli girl from Moshav Yatir was hospitalized for injuries sustained when Arab youths stoned her schoolbus bound for Kiryat Arba, the Jewish township adjacent to Hebron. Armed Jewish settlers guarding the bus fired into the air to disperse the stone-throwers.
Later, the settlers broke into the local Arab high school and forced the headmaster to accompany them to the police station. He was released only after Israeli soldiers intervened. Meanwhile, angry Arab students demonstrated in the streets and pelted the offices of the Israel-backed Village Leagues with stones, smashing windows.
The Israeli authorities clamped a curfew on the Nablus casbah today and on the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah after stones were hurled at Israeli military and civilian vehicles. A curfew imposed yesterday on the Dahayshe refugee camp near Bethlehem remained in force. All adult males were rounded up in the village square and warned that they would be held responsible to see that the stonings ceased.
Tires were burned in the East Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Wadi Joz which is adjacent to Jewish neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, the government appeared to be hoping that the bloody civil war between PLO elements still loyal to Yasir Arafat and Syrian controled PLO dissidents would once and for all discredit the terrorist organization in the eyes of West Bank Palestinians. Arens’ message was directed to them. He heaped scorn on the PLO as “a bunch of terror gangs which managed to convince most countries that they were a national liberation movement but are now spilling each others’ blood in pointless rivalry.”
But the majority of West Bank Palestinians remain loyal to Arafat. Their demonstrations yesterday were aimed against the “Syrian-Libyan aggressors” who are trying to destroy Arafat. Today their anger and frustration was directed at the Israelis.
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