Mideast demonstrators flee gas in terror

PHIL REEVES witnesses how quickly events can turn ugly on the West Bank frontline.

RAMALLAH - At first it sounded like a harmless firework. As it arced low over our heads, spewing a small trail of brown smoke, it gave out a low whine. Yet the Palestinians knew what it was at once. Panic-stricken - and yelling "gas, gas!" - the people around me took to their heels, covering their mouths.

Seconds before, the Ramallah crowd of several hundred had been chatting in the sun as Land Day, an annual demonstration against Israeli expropriation of Arab land, wound up.

Down the hill, a few youths were throwing rocks at the soldiers, who lobbed the occasional sound grenade at them. But the gas canisters came out of the blue.

The mood changed instantly. Within a couple of minutes, Palestinian gunmen, some moving on foot through nearby fields, had opened up on the Israelis with Kalashnikovs. For the next half hour or so, the low hills of the West Bank reverberated with the din of a full-scale firefight.

For weeks, Palestinians have been alleging that the Israelis are using a dangerous new odourless gas against demonstrators, which causes victims to suffer convulsions and burning rashes. Israel's armed forces vehemently deny this.

The truth can only be established by independent scientific tests, but it is clearly an effective way of dispersing Palestinian crowds. Even the most hard-bitten rock-throwers seemed terrified of it.

And yet - earlier in the afternoon - the Israeli troops had also been firing live bullets at the demonstrators.

The turnout of 2000 was larger than is usual these days, a sign perhaps that the effect of Ariel Sharon's limited helicopter assaults on Ramallah and the Gaza Strip last week had been to revive the public's taste for the intifada.

Within minutes of the gas, eight Palestinians had been injured and one killed. .

By nightfall, the tally was five dead and more than 100 injured.

Tension had been building all week, ratcheted up among Israelis by Palestinian bombing attacks, and the shooting dead of the 10-month child of a Jewish settler in the West Bank town of Hebron.

There was added Palestinian anger at seeing the new United States Administration appear to take Israel's side. George W. Bush called for both sides to exercise restraint, but he laid far more emphasis on Yasser Arafat.

Nothing about the latest events will have given the new US President much reason for optimism. In the Gaza Strip, about 30 gunmen from Arafat's Fatah group led a large march, firing in the air and chanting "Sharon, wait, Fatah is going to open your grave in Gaza."

Mohammed Musallam, carrying a Kalashnikov, warned the Israeli Prime Minister to prepare black bags for the remains of his soldiers if they tried to reoccupy Palestinian-controlled areas. He was responding to warnings by Israel's Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, that Israeli soldiers pursuing Palestinian guerrillas would enter Palestinian-controlled areas.

The minister's pledge will please the Israeli public. But, if carried out, there can be little doubt that they will lead to an even nastier war.

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