Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Funeral Begets Funeral in Edgy West Bank
Fourteen-year-old Niveen Jamjoum, shot dead in violence that began during the funeral procession for a Jewish settler on Sunday, was buried here today in a small cemetery behind a school.

Ms. Jamjoum, the youngest of nine children, was shot as she sat on a staircase while Jewish settlers hurled stones and opened fire at Arab homes during the funeral for Elazar Leibovich. He was a sergeant in the Israeli Army and among four settlers who were killed by Palestinian gunmen in a roadside ambush on Friday.

The successive funerals here were stark evidence of the continuing impasse in efforts to end the raging violence, which has taken the lives of nearly 1,500 Palestinians and more than 550 Israelis since the Palestinian uprising erupted 22 months ago.

There were scattered signs today of attempts to break the stalemate.

The Israeli defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said he expected to start security talks with Palestinian officials this week.

Yasir Arafat said after a meeting with the American civil rights leader Jesse L. Jackson that efforts would continue on arranging a cease-fire by Palestinian factions. Those talks were disrupted by an Israeli bombing in Gaza last week that killed a Hamas leader and 14 other people.

In Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, residents fed up with 40 days under curfew defied the ban for the second day. Shops, markets and banks opened and people went in the streets to buy supplies, responding to a call by the city's governor, Mahmoud Aloul, who said the action was "a form of civic resistance." The Israeli Army did not intervene, but stayed on the edge of the city.

[Early on Tuesday, a Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded a Jewish settler and his wife in a house in Itamar, near Nablus, rescue officials and Israel Radio told The Associated Press. Security guards at the settlement reportedly killed the infiltrator.]

The curfew in Nablus has been formally lifted five times, and curfews have been lifted more frequently in other cities.

In Hebron the curfew was lifted today, and streets were jammed. Mourners gathered at a mosque for the funeral of Ms. Jamjoum, and a few dozen people marched behind her body, briefly chanting slogans.

Marwan Jamjoum said his sister had been killed as she sat on an open landing between the second and third floors of their house. On the street below, the settlers' funeral procession had turned into a rampage.

"They kicked in the door to the house," he said. "I was gathering my brothers to hide them, when the settlers shot my sister on the stairs. She was right next to me, and she was hit in the head. The settlers were about 15 meters away. The soldiers didn't do anything to stop them."

News photos published in Israeli newspapers today showed soldiers and border police officers standing next to settlers as they hurled stones and fired their weapons. In one image, a military policeman holds his ears as a settler standing behind him fires his M-16 rifle.

Mr. Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli defense minister, called the settlers' rampage on Sunday "a Jewish riot."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/30/international/middleeast/30MIDE.html

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