Word: jerichos
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...clear from the start how Ammar Shawa, 12, died. His family was posing for photographs with newly arrived Palestinian soldiers in Jericho when one of them allowed Ammar's 13-year-old brother to handle a loaded AK-47 rifle. It went off, accidentally, and the bullet shattered the younger boy's head. Immediately, local activists of the Palestine Liberation Organization put out a story to townsfolk that withdrawing Israeli soldiers had deliberately left the rifle behind to cause an accident. Later they said that an Arab collaborating with Israel had given the boy the gun, and then that ammunition...
...story illustrates two phenomena: how Palestinians automatically blame Israel for trouble of any kind, and how they are beginning to unlearn the reflex that has become so deeply ingrained. Says Sa'eb Erakat, a leading P.L.O. figure in Jericho: "It is a huge transition that we must make in our mentality...
...difficult metamorphosis began in earnest last week when the Israelis completed their withdrawal from two enclaves of Palestinian self-rule, one surrounding Jericho in the West Bank, the other covering most of the Gaza Strip. In both areas, civilian affairs were turned over to P.L.O. control, as was public order and safety. To replace the occupying forces, some 3,000 Palestinian troops, arriving from exile mostly in Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, were put to work as soldiers and policemen -- a force that is to eventually grow...
...answer will help determine how rapidly the PL.O. gets hands on additional territory and powers. Now that the Gaza-Jericho experiment has begun, Israel and the P.L.O. are supposed to start negotiating self-rule for the rest of the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem. Originally those talks were scheduled to take seven months. But since the relatively easy Gaza- Jericho pact took that long, the second phase will almost surely stretch out longer...
With the future so uncertain, there was little jubilation in the territories. "We will be starting off with difficulties in all fields," said Sobhi Terhy, a carpenter in Gaza City. Throughout the Gaza Strip and Jericho, the Palestinian flags that first went up last September were faded and worn. But the widespread sobriety was perhaps a good thing. Wild expectations have long been a weakness of the Palestinians. Now they have the task of building more and dreaming less...