BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Despite a massive show of force by the Israeli military, thousands of Palestinian activists joined demonstrations throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip March 30 to commemorate Land Day and condemn the Israeli government's ongoing efforts to build a new Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. They have been protesting the Zionist expansion plans for nearly two weeks.

The protests increased pressures on Arab regimes in the Middle East, prompting the foreign ministers of the 22- member Arab League to announce March 31 their decision to halt moves to establish diplomatic relations with the Zionist regime and reactivate an economic boycott. The decision must win the approval of the heads of state before being implemented. Prior to the Land Day commemoration, Israeli forces surrounded Palestinian-ruled areas with tanks, armored personnel carriers, and troops. Helicopter gunships flew over the West Bank town of Nablus, and Israeli cops were deployed near Arab towns inside Israel.

Some 4,000 people rallied in Nablus. At a demonstration in the town's soccer stadium, protesters burned Israeli and American flags, a styrofoam model of an Israeli tank, and an effigy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The rally was jointly sponsored by Yassir Arafat's El Fatah grouping and Hamas. In Jenin, also in the West Bank, the National Islamic Committee to Confront Settlements organized a mass rally outside the town's municipal building under the slogan of "no peace with settlements."

Israeli forces used rubber bullets, tear gas, and gravel- firing cannon against these protesters. Hospital officials said a 15-year-old Palestinian was in serious condition after being shot in the chest with live ammunition, another 35 demonstrators were hit by rubber bullets.

Coinciding with this year's Land Day action, thousands of Palestinians marched in Bethlehem as part of a funeral procession for Abdullah Khalil Abdullah, a 20-year-old Bir Zeit University student who was killed during clashes with Israeli soldiers in Ramallah the day before. Palestinian doctors said Abdullah was shot in the chest with a live bullet when Israeli troops fired on youth throwing stones at the southern entrance to this West Bank town. So far, 460 people have been injured.

In Hebron, university students marched from the campus to the city center, hurling stones at Israeli soldiers, who fired rubber bullets, injuring a number of students.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinian residents staged a commercial strike. Shops were closed and rallies organized in a number of other Arab towns throughout Israel. Cops arrested at least 25 Israeli Arabs.

In Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, some 500 Palestinian youths marching toward an Israeli military roadblock were stopped by Palestinian Authority police who clubbed a number of protesters and ordered them to disperse. The demonstrators unleashed their stones on these cops instead.

Land Day, which is celebrated annually, marks the killing of six Arab Israeli protesters by Israeli troops during a 1976 demonstration against confiscation of Arab land in the northern Galilee region of Israel.

This year's action coincided with mounting daily protests that began March 20 in the occupied territories led by Palestinian youth armed only with stones and slingshots who have been confronting Israeli troops and demanding a halt to the construction of a 6,500-unit Jewish housing complex in Arab East Jerusalem. The project at Jabal Abu Ghneim, known as Har Homa in Hebrew, would complete a ring of Israeli settlements in a city that Palestinian fighters claim as the capital for a Palestinian state to be based in the West Bank and Gaza.

"Without stopping the bulldozers and halting settlement activity, there will be no peace process," stated Ahmed Tibi, an adviser to Arafat. The street actions by Palestinian youth have led to increased tensions within the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on how to respond to these protests. At a March 23 leadership meeting of the Arafat led El Fatah organization, the PLO leaders supporters "had trouble beating back demands for immediate return to the `armed struggle,'" reported the International Herald-Tribune.

"There was a very strong reaction," said Kamel Hemeid, El Fatah's secretary-general in Bethlehem. "People said, `Look at the Israeli bulldozers who are burying Jabal Abu Gheneim, and you tell us not to go in the streets?' If we do not direct this anger, it will grow and blow up in the face of the Palestinian Authority, and in the face of El Fatah, and in the face of everybody."

Palestinian cops confront protesters
One particular bone of contention is the role played by the Palestinian Authority cops in protecting the Israeli soldiers from the youthful Palestinian protesters. In Hebron, where hundreds of protesters have been converging daily on the border between the Palestinian and Israeli- controlled zones of the city, the Palestinian police have been attempting to prevent the demonstrators from hurling stones at the Israeli troops.

According to a New York Times reporter, in one such action a police lieutenant shouted at the protesters "Have faith in your government. Our leadership understands the situation better." In response a man in the crowd shouted back, "The intifada didn't come from the Government." He was referring to the six-year-long sustained protests beginning in 1987 in which Palestinian youth refused to be intimidated or driven back. They went up against the Israeli military might armed only with their slingshots.

Meanwhile, U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross, flew to the Middle East for a 24-hour round of separate meetings with Arafat and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His mission occurred shortly after the Clinton administration for the second time in a month vetoed a UN Security resolution demanding Tel Aviv immediately cease construction on the Israeli housing settlement in East Jerusalem.

At the center of Ross's mission was to pressure Arafat to crack down on any resistance by anti-Zionist fighters and somehow put the lid on the growing street actions by Palestinian activists. In 1996, militants in Hamas and Islamic Holy War launched four suicide bombings against the Israeli regime.

Tel Aviv accused the Palestinian Authority of giving a "green light" to the March 21 suicide bombing, in which a Palestinian and three Israelis were killed. On March 31, Israeli forces destroyed the home of the family of the Palestinian.

Netanyahu "has to make up his mind and choose between settlements and peace. He cannot have both," said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator after his meeting with Ross.

Under the 1995 Interim Agreement, the Israeli government is supposed to cede control of most of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority through three troop withdrawals to be completed by mid-1998. In the first of these withdrawals, Tel Aviv gave back only 2 percent of the land to Palestinian control. Another 7 percent was already under joint Israeli-Palestinian rule.

Brian Williams is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 2609.  
 
 
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