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May 15, 2011 9 Killed as Israel Clashes With Palestinians on Four Borders By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ethan_bronner/index.html?inline=nyt-per> ETHAN BRONNER JERUSALEM — <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/israel/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Israel’s borders erupted into deadly clashes on Sunday as thousands of <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> Palestinians — marching from <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Syria, <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/lebanon/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Lebanon, <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/gaza_strip/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Gaza and the West Bank — confronted Israeli troops to mark the anniversary when Arabs mourn Israel’s creation. As many as nine Palestinians were reported killed and scores injured in the unprecedented wave of coordinated protests. The biggest confrontation took place on the Golan Heights when hundreds of Palestinians living in Syria breached a border fence and crowded into the village of Majdal Shams, waving Palestinian flags. Troops fired on the crowd, killing four of them. At the Lebanese border Israeli troops shot at hundreds of Palestinians trying to cross, killing four protesters and wounding dozens more, according to Lebanese officials. Every year in mid-May many Palestinians mark what they call Nakba, or the catastrophe, the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 and the start of a war in which thousands of Palestinians lost their homes through expulsion and flight. But this is the first year that Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon tried to breach the Israeli military border in marches inspired by recent popular protests around the Arab world. Here too, word about the rallies was spread on social media sites. “The Palestinians are not less rebellious than other Arab peoples,” said Ali Baraka, a Hamas representative in Lebanon. Officials and analysts have argued that with peace talks broken down and plans for a request of the United Nations to declare Palestinian statehood in September, violence could return to define this conflict, which has been relatively quiet for the past two years. “This is war, we’re defending our country,” asserted Amjad Abu Taha, a 16-year-old from Bethlehem as he took part along with thousands in the West Bank city of Ramallah near the main military checkpoint to Israel. He held a cigarette in one hand and a rock in the other. Hundreds of Israeli troops using <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stun_guns/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> stun guns and tear gas roamed the area. In Gaza, a march toward Israel also resulted in Israeli troops shooting into the crowd and wounding dozens. The Hamas police stopped buses carrying protesters near the main crossing into Israel, but dozens of demonstrators walked on foot and reached a point closer to the Israeli border than they had reached in years. Later, in a separate incident, an 18-year-old Gazan near another part of the border fence was shot and killed by Israeli troops when, the Israeli military says, he was trying to plant an explosive. The chief Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said on Israel radio that he saw Iran’s fingerprints in the coordinated confrontations although he offered no evidence. Syria has a close alliance with Iran, as does Hezbollah, which controls southern Lebanon, and Hamas, which rules in Gaza. Yoni Ben-Menachem, Israel Radio’s chief Arab affairs analyst, said it seemed likely that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was seeking to divert attention from his troubles caused by popular uprisings there in recent weeks by allowing confrontations on the Golan Heights for the first time in decades. “This way Syria makes its contribution to the Nakba day cause and Assad wins points by deflecting the media’s attention from what is happening inside Syria,” he added. Last week, in an <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11makhlouf.html> interview with The New York Times, a top Syrian businessman and cousin of the president said, “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel.” He urged the West to reduce pressure on the Syrian government. But there were also signs of grass-roots support for the protests. There have been calls on the Internet by Palestinian activists for a mass uprising against Israel to start on May 15. A Facebook page calling for a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising, had gathered more than 300,000 members before it was taken down in March after complaints that comments posted to the page were advocating violence. In Egypt, political organizers have worked for weeks to rally Egyptians around the idea of a third intifada. In Lebanon, posters had gone up in the past week on highways reading “People want to return to Palestine,” in a play on the slogan made famous in Egypt and Tunisia, “People want the fall of the regime.” An Israeli military spokesman, Captain Barak Raz, said that Israeli troops at the Syrian border fired only at those infiltrators trying to damage the security barrier and equipment there. Some 13 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded from thrown rocks. The day’s troubles began when an Israeli Arab truck driver rammed his truck into cars, a bus and pedestrians in Tel Aviv, killing one man and injuring more than a dozen others in what police described as a terrorist attack. Later, hundreds of Lebanese joined by Palestinians from more than nine refugee camps in Lebanon headed toward the border, around the town of Maroun al-Ras, Lebanon, scene of some of the worst fighting in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Though the Lebanese army tried to block them from arriving at the border, some managed to reach it. They placed a Palestinian flag at the fence, and some threw rocks, witnesses said. Israeli soldiers opened fire and at least four were killed and 30 wounded. In Egypt too, the government tried to prevent an international confrontation, sending a heavy deployment of troops to the border in anticipation of a planned march there from Cairo. About 250 people were stopped at El Arish, in the northern Sinai, where they were demonstrating for Egypt to open the border with Gaza, expel the Israeli ambassador and stop selling natural gas to Israel. About 30 activists made it around military checkpoints to stage a small demonstration at the border crossing. The fact that protesters made it to the border in Lebanon and Syria raised questions about whether those governments had at least tacitly endorsed the action. “Palestinians can only reach the border if they get permission from Lebanese intelligence,” said Haytham Zaayter, a Lebanese expert on Palestinian issues. In Lebanon, some speculated about the political message of the march, which came as President Assad of Syria grapples with the gravest challenge to 40 years of his family’s rule. The crackdown in Syria persisted Sunday, with the military continuing its assault on Tall Kalakh, a town near the Lebanese border. The United Nations <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/department_of_peacekeeping_operations/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> peacekeeping force in the border region called for “maximum restraint on all sides in order to prevent any further casualties” and “immediate concrete security steps on the ground” to prevent any further bloodshed. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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