ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 2, 1997 TAG: 9701020078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HEBRON, WEST BANK
SOURCE: Cox News Service
An Israeli soldier opened fire Wednesday on Palestinians at a crowded vegetable market in an attempt to sabotage the pending Israeli troop withdrawal from most of Hebron.
At least six Palestinians were wounded in the New Year's Day shooting, two seriously, in an incident that failed to deter fragile negotiations nearing conclusion on the future of the troubled West Bank city.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators resumed their talks Wednesday night at the Tel Aviv home of the U.S. ambassador to Israel as they sought to close the few remaining gaps on security issues to protect 500 Jewish settlers and more than 130,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
U.S. mediator Dennis Ross, who returned to the region Monday to resume his shuttle diplomacy, kept the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to conclude the Hebron agreement and revive the stalled Middle East peace process.
A summit of the two leaders could take place as early as today to initial a Hebron accord, officials said.
But Wednesday's shooting emphasized the volatile nature of life in disputed Hebron, whose history has been tainted by mutual intolerance and carnage.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders condemned the act by an off-duty soldier, Noam Friedman, 19, who raked Hebron's central outdoor marketplace with fire from an M-16 assault rifle before being restrained by fellow soldiers.
The soldier - who wore the skullcap of a religious Jew, and himself a settler from Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem - told investigators that he traveled to Hebron with the explicit intent of shooting Palestinians to scuttle a long-overdue Israeli troop redeployment.
``Abraham bought the Cave of the Patriarchs for 400 shekels of silver. No one will return it,'' Friedman, triumphantly waving his fist in the air, told Israeli television while being put into a police van after the attack.
The cave, shrine and burial place for the prophet Abraham and his family, is holy to both Jews and Muslims, who regard the biblical figure as the father of their faiths.
Just hours after the shooting, the militant Islamic group Hamas said Israel would pay the price for its ``crimes'' against Palestinians. The shooting ``will not pass without a price, this will come sooner or later, and that comprehensive resistance will continue until occupation ends,'' the group said in a leaflet.
Under the pending agreement, Israeli troops would continue to control 20 percent of the city, including the tomb and an area of Jewish settlements and more than 20,000 Palestinian residents. In the remainder of the city, armed Palestinian police would deploy and Arafat's Palestinian Authority would formally begin to administer the city.
The competing religious claims have been a source of constant tension and antagonism - and repeated bloodshed - in Hebron.
The shooting Wednesday morning evoked memories of the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron by an American-born Jewish settler who opened fire in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine holy to both Muslims and Jews.
``We suddenly heard a lot of shooting, very quickly as though it were a machine gun. We lay on the ground, and I immediately felt I was hit in my right leg,'' said Abdel Karim Atrash, 16, who lay alongside his twin brother, Akram, in Hebron's Alia Hospital. Both teenagers were struck by bullets as they tended their family's vegetable stand.
Witnesses said soldiers guarding a settlement nearby fired into the market thinking they were under attack. Nine Palestinians were injured after the attack when they were beaten by Israeli soldiers attempting to keep the angry crowd under control, hospital officials said.
``As long as the settlers are here, there won't be any real stability or peace,'' Atrash said.
Netanyahu quickly telephoned Arafat and roundly condemned the shooting.
``I want to say again in a sharp way that no crime and no violent act will stand in the way of our completing the work,'' Netanyahu told reporters.
Peace agreements since 1993 have given the Palestinians limited self-rule in the Gaza Strip and six West Bank cities. Hebron is the last major West Bank city still under Israeli occupation.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. A 19-year-old Israeli soldier fires his automaticby CNBrifle at fleeing Palestinians on Wednesday in the West Bank city of
Hebron. Eleven Palestinians were wounded, several seriously, in the
shooting. Talks between Israelis and Palestinians were to continue
today on pulling Israeli security forces from the city. color. 2.
Israeli soldier Noam Friedman (center) is taken away by Israeli
troops after he went on a shooting spree in Hebron. He was bent on
scuttling the Israeli troop pullback.