Israel used excessive force, says Arab League

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (Bahrain), OCT. 21. An emergency summit of the Arab League heads of state, which began in the Egyptian capital of Cairo today, blamed Israel for setting off the conflict and using excessive force during the clashes with Palestinian demonstrators.

However, their unified action is not expected to go beyond a call for a freezing of normalisation with Israel.

As usual the Arab world is divided between Israel's closer neighbours who do not want a widening of the conflict and those on the outer-ring who want an all-out mobilisation of support for the Palestinians.

The Arab summit is taking place when the accord on a ceasefire reached at the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting, is being observed more in the breach.

More clashes in Gaza

Meanwhile, a Palestinian teenager was killed and at least 36 others wounded in clashes with Israeli troops here, as Palestinian territories braced for further violence following the funerals of nine people killed on Friday.

Mohammed-al-Najjar, 13, was pronounced dead after he was hit in the head by a live round, the sources said.

His death brings to 124 the number of people killed in a three- week wave of violence across the Palestinian territories, all but a handful of them Palestinians. Over 3,500 people have been wounded.

Another protester in the Khan Yunis clash was in a very serious condition, according to medical sources.

They had been among a crowd of around 300 Palestinian youths fired on by Israeli troops after they pelted an Israeli position with stones.

Four Palestinians were wounded in another clash which broke out at an army checkpoint at the Erez crossing in the north of the Gaza strip, its main link with Israel.

Two Palestinians were also wounded in similar clashes at the Israeli-controlled Rafah crossing point linking the Gaza strip with Egypt.

The confrontations followed calls by a group of Palestinian parties for demonstrations in Khan yunis and Gaza city expected to bring thousands of protesters onto the streets.

A crowd of around 20,000 mourners gathered in the West Bank town of Nablus to bury four of those killed on Friday.

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