Middle East Trials and Errors

In the West Bank city of Hebron, 14 teenage boys were marched into an unheated courtroom and ordered to sit on a wooden bench. Their hands were bound with strips of clear plastic. Asked by the Israeli military judge if they were guilty of the rioting charges lodged against them, all pleaded innocent. They were herded out of court and back to a makeshift detention center in the nearby village of Dahariya to await trial. In another courtroom, in the city of Nablus, an army prosecutor urged the judge to be lenient with Nasser Zuhadi Kakmeh, 16, because the youth had been wounded in the leg while throwing stones and bottles at security forces and was now repentant. "I want to hear it from you," the judge told the defendant. After a long pause, Kakmeh replied, "I regret what I did. I'll never do it again." His sentence: 45 days in jail and a $193 fine. On the Gaza Strip, the penalties were harsher. Many of those who pleaded guilty were jailed for three months and fined up to $644. Outside a courtroom in Gaza City, an elderly Bedouin, stunned after learning of his young son's high fine, said bitterly, "I will have to beg for that."

Israel last week was dispensing turnstile justice, some of it compassionate, some of it harsh, most of it simply quick. After the worst Arab rioting in the country's occupied territories in nearly two decades, military authorities were determined to make speedy examples of the more than 1,000 demonstrators arrested, the vast majority of them Palestinian males between the ages of 14 and 35. The number of Arab fatalities rose to at least 22 after a 17-year-old Palestinian died of gunshot wounds sustained in one of the riots. The week brought a few fresh incidents of violence, but for the most part an uneasy calm settled over the Gaza Strip and West Bank communities that had erupted in rage for more than two weeks. "The riots in the territories will not happen again," vowed Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "Even if we have to use massive force, we will not allow last week's events to repeat themselves."

As Rabin spoke, the Israelis were in the midst of a military buildup of unprecedented size. Anticipating a new wave of demonstrations on New Year's Day, celebrated as the 23rd anniversary of the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.), authorities sent thousands of fresh troops into the territories. Gaza was patrolled by triple the usual number of soldiers, more than were used to seize the 140-sq.-mi. strip of land from Egypt during the Six-Day War in 1967. Troop strength in the West Bank was double the normal size. The strategy was effective: the anniversary passed without serious incident.