BEIRUT, 14 June 2003 — Thousands of Palestinian refugees demonstrated in camps across Lebanon yesterday, some urging more suicide bombings against Israelis and tearing the US flag apart with their teeth.
Some 20,000 Palestinian refugees demonstrated yesterday inside their camp in the southern port city of Tyre, to protest against Israel’s “massacres” against the Palestinians in Gaza. “We want revenge, Al Qassam Brigades (the military arm of Hamas) ...(Abdul Aziz) Ranteesi, we want a retaliation in Tel Aviv,” the crowd chanted.
Since last Tuesday Israel has carried out several raids in Gaza targeting Hamas’ followers, including Hamas spokesman, Abdul Aziz Ranteesi, who escaped the assassination attempt with minor wounds. Some 24 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli raids.
The demonstrators, who were mainly Hamas followers, burned the US and Israeli flags while chanting “death to Israel ... we will liberate Jerusalem.” On Wednesday, a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus in east Jerusalem, killing 17 people and wounding 100.
In the nearby Al-Bas Palestinian refugee camp, east of Tyre, some 8,000 Palestinians demonstrated, calling on Palestinian factions, including the mainstream Fatah movement, to unite and fight “this new aggression against our people in Gaza.”
Hamas spokesman at the camp, Hajj Rifaat Al-Shanaa, said in a speech “that our people will continue their armed struggle ... the American terrorism policies ignited terrorism around the world.”
At least 3,000 Palestinians filled the streets of the Rashidiyeh refugee camp near the Tyre, carrying pictures of Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. “Martyrdom operations are the beacon that lights our dark road,” read one banner in the march, which drew men, women and children.
Israel has pledged a “war to the bitter end” against Hamas after Israeli-Palestinian violence killed 38 people in two days and threatened the US-backed “road map” to peace. Protesters tore the American and Israeli flags with their teeth before burning .them to protest perceived US bias toward Israel. In the Al-Bas camp, thousands more Palestinians demanded the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel. In northern Nahr Al-Barid, at least 3,000 people marched in support of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat who has been frozen out of US President George W. Bush’s latest peace drive.
Some 380,000 Palestinian refugees are registered in a dozen squalid camps across Lebanon. Denied access to most occupations, they have grown increasingly restive as fighting between Israel and their fellow Palestinians next door has dragged on.
The protesters urged new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to reverse a pledge to end the armed struggle against Israeli occupation and called for more suicide attacks.
In Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip, angry Palestinian mourners yesterday buried victims of Israel’s latest helicopter strike in the Gaza Strip aimed at crushing the Hamas.
The funerals for seven people killed in Thursday’s raid in Gaza City turned into shows of defiance, with repeated pledges to step up attacks on Israel.
A crowd estimated at almost 20,000 at the Bureij refugee camp took part in the funeral of Yasser Taha, a leader of the Hamas military wing, his wife and their three-year-old girl who died in an Israeli missile strike on their car.
Taha’s corpse was wrapped in a green flag and carried on the shoulders of Palestinians calling for revenge against Israel and “strikes on Israeli towns, especially Tel Aviv”.
Dozens of volunteers from the Ezzedin Al-Qassam armed wing of Hamas as well as from Islamic Jihad, another radical group, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades linked to Arafat’s Fatah party fired shots in the air.
“You will hear of our response very soon. We will strike everywhere and at anytime,” a Hamas official told the crowd over loudspeaker. Thousands more Palestinians took part in funerals at Al-Shatah refugee camp and Sheikh Radwan, in northern Gaza City, for the four others killed in Thursday’s raid.
Meanwhile, the quartet of international mediators who drafted the road map to Middle East peace will meet in Jordan on June 22 to try to keep the peace process on track, the United Nations said yesterday.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan “will participate in a meeting of the quartet principals in Amman on the 22nd of June,” UN chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
