Deaths in Nakba clashes

The two men, aged 22 and 17, were killed by live bullets fired during the protest Thursday at a military checkpoint west of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, local hospital officials told media.

Ramallah Hospital officials added that three other people were injured in the clashes, when several hundred youths threw stones at Israeli forces. Dozens more were affected by tear gas inhalation or were injured by rubber bullets, the officials said.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said troops in the area broke up "disturbances" outside Israel's Ofer Prison but had not used live fire.

Nakba commemorations

Thursday's violence came hours after Palestinians marched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to commemorate what they call their displacement during a Mideast conflict that led to Israel's creation in 1948.

Sirens in Ramallah and elsewhere in the West Bank wailed for 66 seconds while people stood in silence to symbolize the number of years since the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning "catastrophe" that is used to describe the Palestinians' uprooting.

More than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced out during the fighting that ended in Israel's defeat of the surrounding Arab states. About 160,000 stayed behind and became Israeli citizens.

Many refugees who left and their descendents remain living in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. More than 5 million Palestinians are registered with the United Nations as refugees.

"On this 66th anniversary of the Nakba, we hope this year will be the one in which our long suffering ends," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech broadcast on Palestinian TV and radio late Wednesday night.

"It is time to put an end time to put an end to the longest occupation in modern history and time for Israel's leaders to understand that there is no other homeland for the Palestinians but Palestine," he said.

Peace talks dispute

Israel ceased participation in US-sponsored peace talks in April after nearly nine months of US-led consultations. That move followed Abbas' Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) announcement of a unity deal with the Islamist Hamas movement, which governs Gaza. During Thursday's demonstrations, the two sides agreed not to display faction banners but rather Palestinian flags.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to enshrine Israel as a Jewish homeland, and has repeatedly demanded that the Palestinians recognize his country's status, something Abbas has refused.

On Thursday, Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of teaching their children that Israel "should be made to disappear".

The Israeli answer was to "continue building our country and our unified capital, Jerusalem", said the rightwing premier in remarks relayed by his office.

Two-state solution?

Abbas in his statement accused Israel of abandoning long-standing international calls for a two-state solution.

"While Israel is closing the door to the two-state solution, recognized by the entire international community, it is leaving only two options - a bi-national state or an apartheid regime," Abbas said in his statement.

Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Erakat, in a commentary published in Israel's left-leaning daily Haaretz, said the PLO has officially recognised Israel's right to exist since 1988.

He added that "the concept of an exclusively Jewish state necessarily implies the negation of the Nakba."

dr/ipj (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)