In a battle of bulldozers, more than 1,000 Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli soldiers Monday to break through a barrier and refill a trench that was created as part of Israel’s blockade of the West Bank’s largest city and business hub.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, signaling his new tack for combating the 5-month-old intifada, had ordered a tightening of the blockade around Ramallah because of the threat of a terrorist attack on Jerusalem, allegedly being planned in the neighboring Arab city of 50,000 people.
At the same time, Israeli officials ordered the Israeli army to lift its roadblocks around four other Palestinian cities where intifada violence had ebbed.
A Palestinian was killed and dozens were wounded in the clashes on the road north of Ramallah after the Palestinian Ministry of Public Works sent a bulldozer to repair the road as protesters cheered and an Israeli tank crew watched from a nearby hilltop.
Soon after, Palestinian youths began throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets in one of the first clashes since Sharon took office last Wednesday vowing to employ tougher tactics to battle the intifada.
Sharon during the weekend ordered a tightening of the Ramallah blockade despite his pledge to ease the Palestinians’ living conditions amid appeals by U.S. and UN officials to lift Israel’s “siege” of the territories.
Palestinian leaders quickly denounced Sharon’s action, saying it punished thousands of people because of allegations against a few, further harmed the economy and health-care system, and drew more aggrieved citizens into the conflict.
Among those protesting Monday were officials and students from Bir Zeit University, a prestigious English-language school that has remained mostly above the fray until Israeli army bulldozers dug a trench across its main access road to Ramallah last week.
“They must want us to confront them,” said Rima Tarazi, 69, a university trustee who joined the march before the stones and tear gas began to fly. “Either they want to break our spirits or make people so angry that they will rise in protest and this will give the Israelis more justification for their oppression.”
Intifada leaders called for two “days of rage” this Wednesday and Friday to further protest the blockade.
The demonstrations could sour the atmosphere for Sharon’s first meeting with President Bush, set for Tuesday in Washington.
Israeli officials downplayed the Ramallah closure.
They said it was not a sign of any shift in Sharon’s campaign pledge to take a tougher stance against violence while also ending the Palestinians’ economic suffering brought by closure of roads in the West Bank and Gaza.
After the first meeting of Sharon’s new Cabinet on Monday, officials announced that the prime minister had ordered the lifting of blockades around the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem, Hebron, Kalkilya and Tulkarm. Israeli officials cited the relative quiet around those cities, saying they could be opened up “by the end of the week.”
“Any place that is quiet and under control, I will not hesitate to open it,” said Benjamin Fuad Ben-Eliezer, Sharon’s defense minister.
Sharon’s aides said the decision to stiffen the blockade around Ramallah was a response to a specific report about a plot to bring a car bomb into nearby Jerusalem. Aides said that several suspected terrorists had been arrested but that the army was searching for more.
Israeli officials allege that Ramallah, a modern city that was enjoying an economic boom before the intifada, has become a center for terrorist activity in the West Bank. The city is under Palestinian self-rule, and there are allegations that paramilitary Tanzim gunmen and wayward members of Yasser Arafat’s security forces hide there between attacks on Israelis.
“We had a very clear-cut indication that a few people were trying to break through Ramallah to get into [Israel] to do a very big operation,” Ben-Eliezer said. “We have to prevent any possibility like that.”
Residents said the trench was dug across the road to Bir Zeit at about 1 a.m. last Thursday, just three hours after Sharon was sworn into office. Since then, the army has increased the number of checkpoints around the city, stationed armored vehicles near some of them and shut off side roads that had been ways around checkpoints under former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
The day after the trench was dug, the army said it was intended to prevent “terrorists” from fleeing back to Ramallah after attacking Jewish settlers on roads north of the city.
Israeli defense analysts said the new strategy reflected Sharon’s intention to improve on Barak’s strategy in the intifada, which was widely seen as a failure. Some said Sharon intends to replace “breathing sieges” with “suffocating sieges” around Palestinian cities where so-called terrorist activity originated.
Others said it was part of Sharon’s plan to divide the West Bank and Gaza into at least 60 different sections. That, they said, would allow the army to better control smaller sections that prove troublesome while relieving pressure on others.
“Our policy remains exactly as I clarified steps against those who attack and those behind them, and easing as much as possible the situation for most of the population,” said Sharon, emphasizing that he is against “collective punishment.”
Yet the continued blockades have been criticized even by some Israeli army commanders, and Arab leaders mounted a large-scale Internet and fax campaign to underscore the damage that the blockades have done to the Palestinians’ health-care and educational systems.
“This is a very, very sad beginning for the new Israeli government,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said in Cairo after a meeting with other Arab officials to plan an Arab summit for the end of this month.
Local Palestinians said the Bir Zeit road had been among the quietest in the West Bank, and they were perplexed by why the Israelis focused on it. The last unblocked road in and out of the city, it was used by people from at least three dozen villages.
Trying to get up the road during the clashes Monday was a young woman who had delivered a baby in Ramallah the day before. She wanted to get home to her other children.
Then there was a 30-year-old tailor who had jumped in and out of three taxis to get past roadblocks to pick up supplies, and a 50-year-old peasant woman with a 66-pound bag of scallions on her head who also tried to elude the clashes.
The scallion peddler, Hadija Yassin, a mother of 10, said it normally took her half an hour to get to Ramallah from her village. It was noon, and she had been “on the road since 8:30 this morning.”
Above the road on the hill, the crew of an Israeli tank watched over the scene and swung the cannon barrel in whichever direction the most action was taking place. Occasionally, soldiers would toss tear gas canisters down into the crowd.
Bir Zeit officials said most students at the 77-year-old school were due back from vacations Wednesday, and student leaders had planned marches of their own for later in the week.
“We were pleased. Up until now, only two students had been hurt during the whole intifada,” said Albert Aghazarian, a history professor and public-relations official at the university.
“What are the Israelis doing? Pushing 5,000 students into the streets?” he asked.
