At least five Palestinians were killed in confrontations with Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday, while protests by Arabs within Israel passed off relatively peacefully.
In the West Bank, where thousands marched in sympathy with Israeli Arabs commemorating Land Day, protests again turned bloody, with Palestinians reporting up to six young men shot dead by Israeli soldiers, four or five in clashes in the city of Nablus and one in Ramallah.
Dozens more protesters were reported injured in Ramallah when Israeli troops fired live ammunition and rubber-coated metal bullets at hundreds of stone-throwers, and later exchanged machinegun fire with Palestinian gunmen. The clashes yesterday followed a week of worsening violence, marked by Palestinian bombings inside Israel and an Israeli bombardment of Palestinian security installations.
Despite fears that the annual Land Day protests yesterday by Israel's Arab citizens would deteriorate into violence, they ended almost without incident yesterday.
Israeli-Arabs, who number some one million, held protest marches to mark the killing of six Arab citizens by police during demonstrations in 1976 against Israeli land expropriation policies.
Thousands of Israeli Arabs participated in the main march in the town of Sakhnin in northern Israel, while participants in a protest in the village of Kfar Kana, where a resident was killed in 1976, carried PLO flags and chanted anti-Israel slogans.
There had been widespread fears that the protests would turn violent, coming only months after 13 Israeli Arabs were shot dead by police in clashes last October in northern Israel, when local Arab residents held angry demonstrations in identification with the Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli police chief, Mr Shlomo Aharonishki, put the non-violent protests down to hours of dialogue with local Arab leaders, which yielded a police agreement to keep forces out of Arab villages.
The Arab community in Israel, however, is still seething over the death of the 13, and hearings at a state commission of inquiry now under way in the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, have turned violent at times, with family members of the dead attacking police officers giving evidence in open court.
Meanwhile, US diplomats yesterday continued the critical line adopted toward Mr Yasser Arafat by President Bush, who said on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority President had to stop the violence.
In response, a Palestinian Authority cabinet minister, Mr Nabil Shath, said responsibility for the violence had to fall on the "occupying" power rather than on the "occupied".
AFP adds: The Palestinian cabinet cancelled its Friday evening meeting in Ramallah after Israel
refused to allow a dozen officials to travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, officials on both sides said. The meeting was due to draft a response to Mr Bush's Thursday statement.