Gun-toting members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh party called for an armed uprising against Israel as thousands demonstrated peacefully Wednesday in the center of Gaza City, reported (AFP)
About 100 armed and masked men led the march of several thousand people, mainly students.
"The Falcons of Fateh call for an armed struggle against Israel," one of the men told the marchers, who assembled in front of the Palestinian legislative council building in the center of the city.
The crowd burned Israeli and United States flags, but there was no violence on what was so far the calmest day in two weeks of unrest across the Palestinian territories, which has killed 100 people and injured more than 2,000.
Some of the masked men fired shots in the air from M-16 and Kalashnikov automatic rifles.
The Falcons of Fateh were an influential force during the Intifada, the street uprising against Israel which lasted from 1987 until the Oslo accords of 1993.
On Tuesday, around 200 armed and masked Palestinians gathered in the center of the West Bank city of Nablus.
Fateh "has decided to form a militia in this critical situation in order to defend the Palestinian people, whose blood is being spilled without any protection or objection from the rest of the world," said a statement read out by one of the masked men.
A Palestinian official also said Tuesday that Palestinians are forming local defense committees in the West Bank to protect themselves from attacks by Jewish settlers.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
