JENIN, West Bank, 26 March 2003 — Israeli soldiers shot dead a 14-year-old Palestinian boy during clashes with stone-throwers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin yesterday, Palestinian witnesses and medics said.
An Israeli Army spokesman said soldiers shot two youths after they tried to climb on top of a tank to grab its mounted machine gun. Local witnesses said the second youth was in hospital in moderate condition.
It was the second killing of a Jenin youth in as many days by Israeli troops occupying the city in a clamp down across the West Bank on Palestinian fighters fighting for an independent state.
But violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has generally eased since US and British forces invaded Iraq last week to destroy its alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Israel strongly backs US-led efforts to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, one of its fiercest Arab foes and a supporter of the Palestinian movement. Palestinians have denounced the invasion and held pro-Saddam rallies.
The US-led war in Iraq has sent sales of Iraqi flags, posters of Saddam and T-shirts bearing his face rocketing in the Gaza Strip.
“Never before were these things in such demand,” said Tareq Abu Dayya, 23, who owns a flag shop in Gaza City. “It’s like a fever. People of all ages and types and political affiliations are crowding my store every day looking for them.”
Abu Dayya said almost all his family were now helping to sew Iraqi flags and paint Hussein’s portrait on T-Shirts.
A T-Shirt costs 25 shekels ($5) and a big flag costs from 20 to 40 shekels ($4 to $8). Smaller flags that can be fixed onto vehicles have proved the biggest sellers.
“Yes, I’ve benefited from this business but I really hope the war stops,” Abu Dayya said. Some Palestinians have also started a telephone campaign, calling people in Iraq at random to express their sympathy and praise their efforts.
At least 1,946 Palestinians and 727 Israelis have been killed in violence since negotiations for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip hit an impasse.
Israeli troops arrested 19 suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank overnight.
Among them were two members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement arrested in Ramallah in a car with a European Union registration number, the spokesman said.
Israeli public radio added that another pair, nabbed in the north of the territory, were preparing a suicide bombing.
Another 33 suspected Palestinian fighters were arrested in the West Bank overnight Sunday, a military spokesman said yesterday said.
