Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 14, 1994                   TAG: 9405160142
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JERICHO, WEST BANK                                LENGTH: Medium

PALESTINIANS WITNESS BIRTH OF A NATION

The occupation of Jericho ended Friday, celebrated by Palestinians as the day their nation was born.

The pace of change was breathtaking.

At sunrise, two Israeli soldiers guarding the iron gate to the military base still ordered away Palestinians waiting outside to catch a glimpse of the hand-over ceremony. It was the usual curt shout of "Go, go."

By afternoon, the gate to the forbidding compound was flung open, and eight buses carrying some 400 Palestinian police officers from the Iraq-based Al Aqsa Brigade rolled into the courtyard. Many raised their Kalashnikov assault rifles - once a symbol of guerrilla warfare and now of Palestinian sovereignty - proudly into the air.

"Jericho marks the beginning of a Palestinian state," the commander of the forces, Brig. Gen. Haj Ismail, told a boisterous crowd of hundreds of Jericho residents who waved flags, danced in circles and hugged the police officers.

Strictly speaking, the PLO-Israel accord that put Jericho and the Gaza Strip under self-rule did not create a state. But most Palestinians, and more than a few Israelis, believe it is a first step.

On Friday, the last Israeli soldiers also pulled out of the southern half of the Gaza Strip, leaving at about 4 a.m. to avoid having Palestinians looking on - or throwing stones. Israeli forces are expected to be completely out of the strip, where 750,000 Palestinians live, by Wednesday.

The transfer of power pulls Israeli patrols off Arab streets. But thousands of soldiers will remain to protect the 4,000 Jews in settlements and to patrol borders with Egypt and Jordan. They will also join Palestinian police to police roads used by Jewish settlers within the autonomous zones or along their borders.

Soldiers leaving Jericho were being redeployed in a West Bank army base near the autonomous zone, the army spokesman's office said. Troops leaving Gaza will either be restationed around Jewish settlements and along the border with Egypt, stationed in Israel, or sent home.

After Israeli soldiers left their last headquarters in southern Gaza, men and women streamed in to hug their own police. Outside, militants who fought the Israelis fired guns in the air.

But the end of occupation in Jericho, which is to be the seat of Palestinian Liberation Organization President Yasser Arafat's autonomy council, was the defining moment for many who had been disheartened by months of tortuously slow negotiations with Israel.

"This is a very large festival that we have dreamed of in the past," said Samir Sinj Lawri, a 22-year-old PLO activist who spent three years in Israeli jails. "We are seeing now that these dreams are coming on the ground."