Around half a dozen Palestinians, including a five-year-old boy, were wounded during clashes between stonethrowers and Israeli troops around the Gaza Strip and West Bank on Friday, medical sources and witnesses told AFP. Meanwhile, an Israeli settler was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting.
Israeli soldiers opened fire, wounding three Palestinians in clashes with around 3,000 demonstrators in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza calling for the eight-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation to continue, said the agency.
The clashes broke out after protestors, some waving Palestinian flags, threw stones at a nearby Jewish settlement after weekly Muslim prayers, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
Similar demonstrations took place around the West Bank, with thousands turning out in Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem.
One Palestinian was wounded by a bullet in clashes with Israeli troops after the Ramallah demonstration, during which around 1,500 people shouted "continue the Intifada until the occupation is over."
Some burned US flags, but there was no shooting in the air or slogans vowing violent attacks on Israel as in previous Friday demonstrations before Palestinian President Yasser Arafat ordered a ceasefire last Saturday.
Meanwhile, Palestinian gunmen shot and seriously wounded an Israeli motorist Friday near the West Bank settlement of Ofra, north of Ramallah, reported Haaretz.
The gunmen escaped from the area, said the paper.
In west Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli women from the pacifist Women in Black movement also held a demonstration against Israel's 34-year occupation of Palestinian land.
The demonstrators, marking the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war during which Israel seized the Gaza Strip, West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, waved placards reading "enough of the occupation," "the occupation is killing us all," and "solidarity with the Palestinian people."
AFP also reported that Israeli agents arrested six Palestinian workers in an undercover operation at a Christian monastery near Bethlehem on Friday. The agents were preventing the workers from infiltrating Jerusalem to work there illegally, witnesses said.
The workers from Bethlehem had been traveling via the Deir Tantur monastery, which lies halfway to Jerusalem with entrances on either side, to avoid Israeli checkpoints on the road, one of them, Yussef Salem, told AFP.
On Friday before dawn, Israeli special forces in disguise joined the group of Palestinian workers, taking out their pistols when they reached the monastery and detaining around 30 of them, said Salem, who was among them.
The Palestinians were taken to a nearby Israeli checkpoint where all but six of them were released, he said.
Palestinians need special permits to work inside Israeli-controlled areas – Albawaba.com
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