Several thousand Israeli settlers and supporters celebrated to mark the end Sept. 26 to a 10-month moratorium on new construction in their West Bank enclaves. "The building freeze is over," Danny Danon, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, declared as balloons were released into the air at the West Bank settlement of Revava. "Today we mark the resumption of building in Judea and Samaria!" Netanyahu had urged Israeli settlers to show restraint as the limited building freeze expired at midnight. But at Revava, outside Nablus, residents expressed their defiance at a groundbreaking ceremony where a mixer symbolically poured cement into a hole in the ground amid cheers and the blasting of car horns. The celebration was attended by thousands bused in for the occasion. (Reuters [2], Sept. 26)
The festivities came after days of clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli security forces in annexed East Jerusalem, with Israeli police detaining at least 18. On Sept. 24, several hundred people threw rocks at Israeli troops in the Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiya following reports that a Palestinian baby had died from inhaling tear gas from an Israeli grenade. News of the death was broadcast from loudspeakers on top of mosques in the neighborhood, with youths then setting tires on fire and pelting Israeli forces. The indpendent Palestinian Ma'an News Agency cited unnamed medics as syaing the 14-month-old boy suffocated after the gas was fired at residents and their houses in Issawiya. An Israeli police spokesman said he had not received any reports of injuries and that police were using minimum force to respond to incidents in Issawiya, Silwan and Ras Al-Amoud. (AFP [3], Sept. 25; Ma'an News Agency [4], Sept. 24)
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