Military

DATE=11/08/00

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=ROCK THROWER

NUMBER=5-47345

BYLINE=LAURIE KASSMAN

DATELINE=RAMALLAH

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: For more than five-weeks, Palestinian men and boys and even women have gathered at areas in the West Bank and Gaza to hurl rocks and stones at Israeli soldiers. Sometimes Israeli bullets or tear gas answer their stones. But they keep going back day after day. Correspondent Laurie Kassman spoke with some of the young men and girls to find out why.

TEXT: The young Palestinian refuses to give his name. A blue-striped cloth masks his face so nobody can recognize him. The Palestinian flag is draped around his shoulders. He is a familiar sight at this barricade in Ramallah.

He clutches a slingshot in one hand. Hanging from his belt is a plastic bag filled with marbles, stones, and Israeli rubber bullets that he has collected from the street.

He is on his way to the makeshift barricade where he and his friends pelt Israeli soldiers with stones as they stand behind their jeeps up the street, their rifles at the ready

/// ARABIC AND FADE ///

I want to liberate my homeland, he says, and stop the Israeli aggression on our people.

The 24-year-old knows the danger. Israeli soldiers often respond with bullets and tear gas.

/// ARABIC AND FADE ///

I know I could be killed. My friend was wounded several times by Israeli bullets, he says.

Another youngster lifts his shirt to show several wounds on his back from rubber bullets and a tear-gas canister

Before the clashes erupted more than five-weeks ago, the young masked Palestinian says he worked in construction with his father. Since the Israeli closure of the Palestinian areas, he and his father cannot get to their jobs.

The 24-year-old is a father himself, but that does not stop him from coming to the barricades.

He and his friends, slingshots at the ready, run up to the barricade of cement blocks and rubber tires to launch their shower of stones.

/// SOUNDS OF SHOTS ///

The Israeli soldiers answer with warning shots and tear gas. The Palestinian youths retreat quickly.

/// ARABIC AND FADE ///

The masked youth says his family knows he comes to the barricades, but they cannot stop him.

He is a veteran of the first Palestinian intifada or uprising which started in 1987 and fizzled out with the launching of the 1993 Oslo interim peace process.

/// ARABIC AND FADE ///

He says this intifada (uprising) is more serious, more like the end of the road of desperation. He says the Palestinians must decide now whether they will live in occupation or independence.

/// ARABIC AND FADE ///

You know we are not against peace, he says, but Israel is not giving us the peace we had been promised.

On this day, several teenage girls also join the confrontation. Some carry stones for the boys. Some throw rocks themselves.

/// WOMAN'S VOICE IN ARABIC AND FADE ///

This 15-year-old girl says they want to help the intifada. She insists she is not afraid. If we do not defend our homeland, she asks, who else will?

/// WOMAN'S VOICE AND FADE ///

This is the only way, she says, nothing else has worked.

She says she will come as long as it lasts, but admits she does not come every day. She says it depends on her homework.

Other youngsters on their way home from school stop briefly to watch. An elderly man serves tea from a makeshift stand behind two ambulances waiting to tend to the wounded. This day nobody is hurt. But tomorrow is another day. (SIGNED)

NEB/LMK/KL/RAE