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NY Times May 15, 2011
9 Killed as Israel Clashes With Palestinians on Four Borders
By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Israel’s borders erupted into deadly clashes on Sunday as
thousands of Palestinians — marching from Syria, Lebanon, 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 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 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.
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.
They passed posters that had gone up the past week on highways in
Lebanon. “People want to return to Palestine,” they read, in a play on
the slogan made famous in Egypt and Tunisia, “People want the fall of
the regime.”
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.
Even 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.
“Palestinians can only reach the border if they get permission from
Lebanese intelligence,” said Haytham Zaayter, a Lebanese expert on
Palestinian issues.
The United Nations 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.
Anthony Shadid contributed reporting from Beirut, and Fares Akram from Gaza.
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