The Palestinian Ma'an News Agency reports: 14 Palestinians killed in Syria camp.
Angered over the failure of camp leaders to organize demonstrations marking the Naksa, the anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights, an estimated 100,000 mourners were said to have attacked the headquarters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.
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Militants with the PRFL-GC reportedly opened fire on the crowd, who were taken to a local camp hospital for treatment. The report cited hospital staff saying 14 were pronounced dead. During the clash, mourners reportedly set fire into the PFLP-GC headquarters, and demanded condemned the group for its use of weapons against the crowd.
Here is video of one of the protesters being shot in the head. (Viewer discretion is advised.)
The Palestine Press Agency reports popular chanting against "Khaled Mashaal and other political leaders based in Damascus, accusing them of being agents of the Syrian regime which is facing a popular revolution about a month ago." (google translation from Arabic to English) Yediot Ahronot, citing "the Arab-language Syrian website 'Bokra,'" also reports that "Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal was among those caught in the fray, as well as Popular Front General Command (PFLP-GC) Head Ahmed Jibril and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine politburo member Maher al-Taher."
Al-Jazeera likewise reports: Violence erupts in Syria refugee camp as mourners vent anger against Palestinian group over deaths in Israeli firing. The accompanying video reports: "These mourners say the PLFP manipulated the young protesters into beginning that march" (referring to Sunday's events on the Golan Heights).
Haaretz's Jack Khoury reports:
According to witnesses, an angry crowd of mourners began to charge toward leaders of Palestinian factions, prompting their security guards to open fire.
Meanwhile, in a marked change from Sunday, "
Quiet reigned on Monday on the southern outskirts of the Druze town of Majdal Shams, which overlooks the Syrian border and was the scene of Sunday's shootings and protests." The difference was that
Syrian security forces blocked the access road to the fence, and stopped buses with demonstrators from Palestinian refugee camps near Damascus from reaching the border." Ha'aretz's Amos Harel adds:
There, in a nutshell, is the difference between Sunday and Monday. While it remains unclear to what degree the Syrian regime was involved in organizing the protests and urging participants to try to cross the border, on Monday the regime showed that it can prevent the protests if it wants to. Just two roadblocks were all that was needed to prevent any clashes near Majdal Shams.
The crucial role played by the Syrian regime focuses attention on the question: Are Assad & Co. trying to use Palestinians to divert attention from the regime's brutal attempt to repress its own subjects, in the course of which Syrian authorities have killed and injured many, many times the number of Golan casualties.
A news storty in today's New York Times sees Syrian manipulation as creating "a rare convergence of Israeli and Palestinian sentiment,
that sense of exploitation may at least in part explain the markedly muted reaction in the Palestinian territories to Sunday’s deadly confrontation in the north.
Leaders in Hamas-run Gaza condemned the killings of the protesters but, unusually, did not go as far as to call for revenge. The mainstream Fatah movement and other political factions also issued condemnations, but there were no official statements from the office of President Mahmoud Abbas or other Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank.
Indeed, the Times quotes, Salim al-Bast, a librarian in the Amari refugee camp, which abuts the West Bank city of Ramallah, as saying: “The Syrian regime is trying to divert attention from the massacres it is committing in Syria."
President Obama's State Department agrees:
The United States said on Monday that Syria was "clearly" behind lethal confrontations between Israeli troops and Palestinian protesters along the once-quiet ceasefire line between the two countries and that Israel has a right to defend itself.
"This is clearly an attempt by Syria to incite these kinds of protests," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, saying Damascus hoped to divert attention from its own internal problems. "Israel, like any sovereign nation, has a right to defend itself."
In contrast, but also demonstrating the crucial role played by those who control the Arab side of Israel's borders, the Lebanese army banned demonstrations near the border with Israel. (AFP)
Also, accounts of Sunday's events are emerging that raise questions about earlier attempts to simply blame Israel. For example, the Guardian, a newspaper not noted for having pro-Israel sympathies, reports that those "surging to witin 20 metres of the fenced off border . . . threw stones and molotov cocktails at Israeli troops as snipers fired rubber-coated bullets and live rounds at some activists."
Today, Amos Harel in Haaretz reports: "An initial inquiry found the IDF only fired several dozen sniper bullets at the protesters."
A senior officer told Haaretz that only tho se who actively tried to uproot or cut the fence were targeted. The army also said that the IDF had nothing to do with the deaths of at least eight protesters who were killed when demonstrators rolled burning tires and threw Molotov cocktails onto a minefield on the Syrian side of the border, setting off several mines.
Viewed in a larger context, the Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence in Syria and disputed accounts of Sunday's events in the Golan Heights, important as they are in their own right, can be seen as underscoring the need for a peaceful settlement of disputes between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Progress on the Syrian front doubtless awaits clarification of the situation within Syria. In any case, peace between Israel and Palestine is key.
Yesterday, Haaretz reported: Israelis, Palestinians holding separate covert talks with Washington "an effort to reignite peace talks."
In response to a U.S. initiative, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent aide Yitzhak Molcho as the Israeli representative, while the Palestinians have sent negotiator Saeb Erekat and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeinah.
The Unites States initiated the talks following the French proposal which calls for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to meet this month or by early July with an eye to reviving talks which broke off last year in a dispute on Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.
But in a joint press conference yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe "stressed that there was no point in setting up a peace conference before the parties showed a willingness to negotiate."
"Right now we are still in a wait-and-see attitude, because we don’t yet have any assurance from either party that they are willing to return to negotiations," Clinton added.
Juppe strengthened Clinton's statements, saying that "the Palestinians reacted positively and the Israelis didn’t say no. We will only have this conference if there is sufficient work done," he said, adding that "our main concern is what we are heading [for] in September. This situation will be difficult for everybody and the only way to avoid it is to boost the re-launch of the negotiations."
President Obama's May 19th State Department speech lights the way:
Ultimately, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them, nor can endless delay make the problem go away. But what America and the international community can do is state frankly what everyone knows: a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples. Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people; each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, albeit highly unexpected, if participants in I-P discussions here, coming from our different viewponts, could unite around President Obama's state of "what everyone knows" is the necessary shape of the necessary, but far from assured, two states for two peoples peace settlement. This is not a call for critics of Israeli or Palestinian actions to stop criticizing. It is a call, however, for an end to comments that seek to delegitimate fundamental Israel Jewish and Palestinian Arab aspirations for their own states and homelands. If it is a truism that peace is only made between enemies, because friends are already at peace with each other, it's also important to remember that enemies who are unable to bring themselves to acknowledge each other's rights to an independent, self-governing future will be unable to achieve peace.