Palestinians in W. Bank protest the Israeli barrier

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Stone-throwing Palestinians demonstrated against the Israeli separation barrier yesterday at sites near the barrier and in cities and towns across the occupied territories. But with the exception of Hebron, the largest city in the southern West Bank, crowds were small in the wake of the attack Sunday by a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bus in Jerusalem.

In Hebron, an estimated 7,000 Palestinians demonstrated, and Israeli soldiers who were pelted with stones responded with tear gas, according to a spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces. In Abu Dis, near Jerusalem, Israeli police said, six officers were injured by stones thrown by demonstrators before the crowd of several hundred people was pushed back with stun grenades and tear gas.

In a silent but haunting rebuttal to the protests, Israeli officials placed the blasted-out hulk of the bus, on which eight were killed and nearly 60 injured Sunday, on the Israeli side of the separation barrier at Abu Dis.

Stone-throwing and tire-burning demonstrations also occurred at Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem; at Aram, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, in Jenin, and in Tulkarem.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces said numerous other demonstrations occurred that were nonviolent.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in a speech carried live and rebroadcast repeatedly on radio and television stations of the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic extremist group Hezbollah, attacked what he called "the racist settlement wall." Palestinian leaders also referred to the barrier as a Berlin Wall, an apartheid wall, and an annexation wall.

"This wall of annexation and expansion has turned our cities into collective prisons," Arafat said. "It confiscated our land. It uprooted our trees, it hurts our Christian and Muslim shrines. . . . It prevents Muslims from reaching Jerusalem and it prevents Christians from going to the city of Jesus, God bless him. It prevents us from entering the Ibrahimi Mosque" -- the name Palestinians give to the burial place of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs in Hebron.

"The Palestinian and Israeli peoples will not live in peace and coexistence with this racist Zionist wall," Arafat said, urging "the Palestinian people to make their voice heard against this wall . . . to the Hague court." He implored the World Court "to say that this wall is illegal and open the door of hope for peace by building bridges of friendship and cooperation, and not walls of annexation and expansion."

But in Ramallah, the political seat of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians -- who unanimously oppose the separation barrier -- found fault with the Authority's policies on the issue and generally disregarded Arafat's exhortations. Shopkeepers scorned the Authority's call for a one-hour protest strike and stayed open. Students released from their schools to take part in the rallies went home instead.

From falafel sellers and university students to government functionaries and elderly women, Palestinians at the sparsely attended rally against the separation barrier said their leaders had handled the issue badly.

"We cannot destroy the wall now," said Mohammed Ibrahim, 19, a business administration student at Al Quds University who watched the Ramallah demonstration from the sidelines. "At the beginning, there might have been some chance. . . . But now, after they have finished it?"

Fatmah Husni Iliam, 40, a housewife from the village of Budrus, some of whose residents have been separated from their agricultural lands by the barrier, said village residents "protested very strongly, every day" when barrier construction began more than a year ago. "There was no support" from the Palestinian leadership. "They never helped us, not even a word. . . . Now it is too late."

She said she was disappointed by the small turnout and weak presentation of the Palestinian case at the rally, and was going home while the event was still in progress.

Palestinian Authority officials tried to prevent Abu Ali Mukbel, an official in the Authority's youth and sport ministry, from being heard at the rally, but Mukbel, who said he has been imprisoned five times by Arafat and his allies for expressing critical, dissident opinions, got the microphone and delivered a blistering critique.

"We cannot cover the sun with a sieve. This is not a struggle," he told the steadily dwindling and inattentive crowd. "We should reorganize the struggle so that it is not just slogans and speeches. We should march to the wall and attack the Israelis with stones and bombs and all our fury."

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com