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Friday, December 9, 1988

Palestinians mark first anniversary of intifada with strikes, defiance

But Sami Balboul, a professor at Bethlehem University, said the relative quiet observance of the anniversary day showed that the Palestinians had changed their tactics from the mass demonstrations of a year ago.

"The Palestinians want to show the world they really want peace, that they want the rest of the world to intervene here, so they want to settle down for a time," Balboul said.

Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna, Israeli commander of the central district that includes the West Bank, credited the army for curbing the violence.

"We have succeeded in blunting the Palestinian population's sense that they could dictate events here and shake off our control," Mitzna told The Jerusalem Post. "The Palestinians here know that they have to live with us and we have the time and the resources to control the area."

The uprising was triggered by events that heightened Arab frustration with the Israeli occupation of the territories, captured from Jordan and Egypt, respectively, during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Scattered violence in the territories in the preceding months came to a head Dec. 9, when a mob attacked an army patrol in Jabalia and the soldiers opened fire, killing one youth and wounding 28 others. The casualties touched off a cycle of violence and riots that evolved into the popular revolt.

Residents of one neighborhood defied Israeli authorities and went to the mosque for sabbath prayers, Palestinian sources said, but soldiers surrounded the place of worship and seized the worshippers' identity cards after prayers.

After nightfall, Gazans shot green, red and white fireworks -- the colors of the Palestinian flag -- into the skies for the second straight day to mark the anniversary.

West Bank shops were closed Friday, but pedestrians were out and cars traveled on most main roads. On a back country road near Ramallah, youths manned a stone roadblock to enforce the two-day general strike called by the underground leadership to mark the anniversary.

Since the start of the popular revolt, at least 306 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands wounded by gunfire in clashes with Israeli soldiers, beatings or tear gas. The violence has also left eight Israelis dead and more than 1,100 wounded.

In the Jabalia refugee camp, where the uprising began Dec. 9, 1987, a U.N. relief official said the "intifada," the Arabic word for the uprising, would continue despite the enormous hardship suffered by the Palestinians.

"I think the Palestinian people have reached the point of no return," the official said. "People are under the impression that it will not end over night, and they are prepared for a long struggle."

At St. Luke' Evangelical Hosptial in Nablus, Mohammend Hassad Radi, 19, said a bullet wound he suffered Thursday only made him more committed to the uprising, which indirectly led to the declaration last month of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories.

"I'm willing to be shot 100 times over in order to have our independent state," Radi said.


By David Alexander
JABALIA, Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip (UPI) -- A curfew, strikes and a heavy military presence shut down most activity in the occupied territories Friday, but Arabs defied authorities in some areas to mark the first anniversary of the Palestinian uprising.

Palestinian sources said at least six Arabs were wounded by army gunfire in isolated incidents, including a 6-year-old girl who was shot in the head during a clash at a U.N.-run refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus.

The army said three people were wounded in the territories, and police reported one soldier was hit in the eye in a stone-throwing incident in an Arab village outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.

Also on the anniversary day, Israeli commandos raided Palestinian guerrilla bases near Beirut for the first time since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, leaving at least nine dead, including an Israeli officer.

Beefed up army units patrolled the occupied territories following the imposition of an indefinite curfew Thursday night on the Gaza Strip and the closure of Nablus and the West Bank city of Ramallah to journalists. State-run Israel Radio said troops were also patrolling main highways and city roads within Israel.

In support of the 1.7 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, demonstrators marched in Jerusalem's Old City and in an Israeli village, while merchants in Arab East Jerusalem shuttered their stores and sympathy strikes were reported in several Israeli villages.

There were few signs of the widespread rioting by Palestinians frustrated by 21 years of Israeli occupation that had engulfed the territories during the past year.

Gaza streets were deserted. A few banned red, white, black and green Palestinian flags fluttered on power lines and stone barricades were strewn across some streets, but residents forbidden from attending Friday prayers stayed close to their homes, peering out of their windows at the army patrols.