HEBRON, West Bank, 29 July — A Palestinian girl was shot dead yesterday as enraged Jewish settlers rampaged, guns ablaze, through this West Bank city following the funeral of an Israeli killed by Palestinian militants, Palestinian witnesses and hospital sources said.
Nivin Musa Jamjoum, 14, was shot in the head as she stood on her balcony near a shrine, the hospital sources said. Her brother was also wounded, they said. At least another 11 Palestinians were injured in the rampage, including a family of six riding a horse-drawn cart which was rammed by settlers in a car on a bypass road, the sources said. The family members were said to be seriously injured.
Two others, one of them a man in his 20s, were suffering from gunshot wounds, while a nine-year-old was beaten up, they said. Another Palestinian youth was reportedly stabbed and later evacuated for medical treatment by the Israeli army. Witnesses said the settlers also took over a three-story Palestinian house, confining the Abu Nagiba Al-Sharbati family to a single room, while a second Palestinian house was torched and badly damaged. The burned house belonging to the Abu Samir Al-Sharbati family and contained a large collection of antiques, witnesses said. The family was evicted before the house was torched.
Settlers were also shooting and throwing stones at Palestinian houses near the Jewish enclave of Avraham Avinu after the funeral of an Israeli soldier and resident of the area who was killed Friday in a Palestinian ambush.
The rioting came as politicians moved to restore contacts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority officials, after an Israeli air raid on Gaza City on July 22 killed 15 people, including a militant leader and 13 civilians, and threatened to derail fragile talks that had resumed last weekend. A senior Palestinian official said Israeli Finance Minister Silvan Shalom was to meet today with his Palestinian Authority counterpart Salam Fayad.
The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, asked the UN Security Council yesterday to pass a binding resolution ordering Israel to withdraw its troops to positions occupied before the outbreak of the intifada. “The Security Council must ... pass a binding resolution for a cease-fire, a withdrawal of Israeli forces to the lines of Sept. 28, 2000, and send international observers” to the Palestinian territories, the leadership said in a statement released after meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
The meeting, chaired by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, called on the “international community to adopt a firmer and more effective position and to be totally involved in peace efforts.” It said the observers should be under the control of the so-called diplomatic “quartet” of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations, trying unblock the Middle East peace process.
Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara stepped up Syrian criticism of US Middle East policy in comments published yesterday, slamming its “biased and blind” support of Israel. “We are not satisfied with the biased and blind (policies) of the United States in support of Israel that attacks the Palestinians and threatens stability in the region,” the foreign minister told the official Syrian media from Algiers, where he arrived on Saturday.
