Settlers, Palestinians clash
By Ravi Nessman, Associated Press, 4/1/2004
JERUSALEM -- Ultra-Orthodox Jews armed with assault rifles lugged boxes, sofas, and potted plants into two buildings in a crowded Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem at daybreak yesterday, sparking clashes between Israeli troops and angry residents.
Israeli officials said the group had the right to live in the buildings in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in the 1967 Mideast war.
Palestinian officials said the incident proved Israel was less interested in peace than in tightening its grasp on East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want for the capital of a future state.
Later yesterday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel defended his plan to unilaterally withdraw from most or all of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. A day earlier, he agreed to a binding referendum among his rebellious Likud party members on the "disengagement" plan.
Sharon said Israel must draw its own security line, which would mean "withdrawal from areas which it is understood will not be under Israeli control in any permanent agreement to be signed in the future, which cause great friction between Israelis and Palestinians -- the Gaza Strip, for example."
A poll published yesterday in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper indicated that 51 percent of Likud members support the plan, while 36 percent oppose it. The Dahaf Institute poll questioned 507 Likud members and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Sharon blamed the Palestinians for not acting to stop violence. An Israeli pullout from Gaza would remove their main "excuse," he said, and then, "we need to tell them, please gentlemen, when there is no Israeli presence, let's see you start to act."
Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, cautiously welcomed the Gaza plan, but only as a first step.
"In principle, we welcome the Israeli withdrawal from our Palestinian land," Qurei told Palestinian lawmakers. "But for any withdrawal to have meaning for us . . . it should be followed by a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, too."
Palestinians want a state in all the West Bank and Gaza. But many in Sharon's hard-line government view his limited withdrawal plan as the most they are willing to concede.
Qurei also condemned Palestinian suicide attacks, which have killed more than 450 Israelis in the past 3 1/2 years of violence, saying they have damaged the Palestinian economy, given Israel cover to continue building settlements and a contentious West Bank barrier, and were morally wrong.
"Such attacks were used as excuses to continue the comprehensive aggression and impose collective punishments, including . . . the road blocks and incursions, which cause daily harm to the dignity of hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinian citizens," he said.
Early yesterday, a group of Jews moved into a seven-story apartment building and a smaller house in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The settlers hauled a water tank onto the roof of one building and set up a generator.
Clashes erupted in a narrow alley, and Palestinian residents threw stones from roofs. Police and soldiers ran onto other rooftops and fired tear gas at the demonstrators. Troops pulled young men out of nearby homes, beat one of them with a baton, and dragged away six others in handcuffs. They took no action against the settlers.
Nine Palestinians were arrested for stone-throwing, and six police officers were hurt, police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The group of Ultra-Orthodox Jews said yesterday they had come to reinforce the Jewish presence in Silwan, which they said housed a community of Yemenite Jews 122 years ago. In 1938, the last of the families were forced to leave during Arab riots, said Daniel Luria, a spokesman for the group.
"Sixty-six years later, we have returned Jewish families to the area with the idea of living side-by-side with the Arabs," Luria said.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.