Word: balata
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...along the chaotic main street of Nablus. As Kamel Salameh wove the VW through the morning rush-hour traffic, he slammed into nine-year-old Islam Atallah. She spun off the hood like a doll, dead. With screaming tires, Salameh turned his truck and sped off. He headed for Balata refugee camp at the edge of Nablus. The patrolmen chasing him were nervous. The camp is a no-go area for Yasser Arafat's police. Salameh swerved into Balata's narrow streets and disappeared. Soon after, the police found the truck abandoned, but Salameh had melted into the alleys...
That afternoon, back at the police station, the officers heard gunfire. It was Balata's answer to the lawmen's incursion. Forty stolen cars rolled slowly out of the camp, each loaded with car thieves firing rifles in the air. Behind them walked hundreds of Balata residents. The criminals drowned the police station and the municipality in the deafening racket of their Kalashnikovs. The people of Nablus fled in fear, and their rulers--the mayor appointed by Arafat, the police chief, the Governor--all got the message: Back off. "Every day there's a fight between someone from Balata...
Later in the week, Gaza's frustration ignited passions about 50 miles away in the West Bank town of Nablus. An angry crowd of nearly 3,000 in the Balata refugee camp threw stones at Israeli border police. A barrage of rubber bullets failed to stop the mob, composed largely of women and youths. The Israelis, who claimed many of the women were wielding knives or sticks, turned to tear gas and real bullets. Four protesters were killed and at least 30 wounded. Demonstrators battled troops for more than five hours. As fiery Arab protests raged through the territories...
...remark was prompted by the death of a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy named Ramadan Zeitun, who was shot last week during disturbances at the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank town of Nablus. At first it was assumed that the boy had died after Israeli soldiers fired into a crowd of rioters. Later it appeared that he may have been shot by a carful of local Israeli settlers. Either way, his death symbolizes the confusion and chaos that beset the West Bank as it undergoes the worst round of violence there since the spring...
...temporary roadblock that had been erected by the Israelis. When Israeli soldiers advanced, the students threw stones, and the soldiers responded with tear gas and then bullets. Two students, both of them 22, were killed instantly. The next day a 14-year-old was shot dead at the Balata refugee camp, where three days later Zeitun was killed. Skirmishes flared as soldiers fought running street battles with youthful Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Israelis set up additional roadblocks, checking identity cards and searching for arms...