Gaza Carnage Sets West Bank Aflame

By Mel Frykberg, IPS News. Posted December 28, 2008.

In Ramallah hundreds of protestors from the various Palestinian factions waved banners and flags, and decried the Gaza slaughter. They called for unity and for Gaza's Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and West Bank Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to bury their differences and put the Palestinian cause above their personal politics.

Many in the crowd waved Fatah flags, associated with Abbas and the PA, showing clearly their empathy with fellow Palestinians despite the political divide between the two Palestinian territories.

IPS joined the demonstration as it marched around Ramallah city. In the crowd were people from all sections of Palestinian society. Elegantly turned out middle-aged women from Ramallah's Christian minority marched side by side with tough young men from the surrounding refugee camps.

Grandmothers, journalists, factional leaders, and mothers with toddlers walked linking arms with a scattering of international sympathizers based in the cosmopolitan central West Bank city. Many countries have representative offices to the PA in Ramallah.

This was one of the largest demonstrations that Ramallah witnessed in the last few years of conflict.

"I couldn't just sit at home. I felt overwhelming anger at the situation in Gaza and I needed to show my solidarity," Munther, a young computer programmer from the Palestinian Legislative Council who voted for Abbas in the last election told IPS.

As the crowd circled the city center, the Palestinian police looked on quietly and stood back. But when the demonstrators marched on the Muqata, the government headquarters of the PA where Abbas was in his office, the mood of the Palestinian security forces changed.

On approaching the Muqata's entrance the crowd was met by Palestinian soldiers who took up positions and held their weapons at the ready. But the Shebab, or youth in Arabic, decided to head towards the nearby Israeli military checkpoint of Beit El.

While the more cautious in the crowd stood back, the young men headed towards waiting Israeli military jeeps and tanks and started to sling stones at them, and set tyres alight to block the road.

The Israelis responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, injuring a number of youngsters who were rushed to nearby hospitals in Palestinian ambulances.

This IPS correspondent helped two youths injured by rubber bullets to hospital. They were shot as they stoned the soldiers.

As dozens of Palestinian riot police arrived on the scene to disperse the protestors, one of them remarked that the police arrival had been coordinated with their Israeli colleagues on the other side of the checkpoint.

"They are nothing but quislings and a militia of the Israelis. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Gaza, and who do they aim their weapons at? Not the Israelis but us, their brethren protesting the slaughter," said one of the youths.

"There will be more protests tomorrow and I will be back," he added, as he stepped out of the taxi and limped towards the emergency room.

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