JERUSALEM — A day after mass protests at Israel’s borders set off deadly clashes, Israelis expressed concern that an alarming new chapter had opened in their country’s conflict with the Palestinians.
“The nightmare scenario that Israel has feared since its establishment came true: that Palestinian refugees would simply start walking from their camps across the border, and with their own two feet try to realize the right of return,” wrote Aluf Benn, a commentator in the Haaretz newspaper.
The worry came amid intense scrutiny of Sunday’s clashes, in which Israel’s military used gunfire to repel Palestinian protesters who marched from Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and breached the frontier in the Golan Heights.
Among Palestinians, there was a sense of satisfaction at what was widely seen as the success of the coordinated protests, which were held on the anniversary of the establishment of Israel in 1948.
“This shows that the occupation can be toppled,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a leader of the militant group Hamas, said in a telephone interview from the Gaza Strip. “The role of the people has proven itself. Next time, millions will participate.”
The protests, inspired by the uprisings sweeping the Arab world, have conjured up images on both sides of the conflict of waves of dispossessed Palestinians rising up to reclaim homes they lost more than 60 years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to visit Washington this week amid growing pressure to produce a diplomatic initiative to reinvigorate the peace process, said the protests were aimed at Israel’s destruction.
The demonstrations presented a new type of challenge for the battle-tested Israeli army, which faces the prospect of masses of unarmed protesters, either coming from across the border or from inside the Palestinian territories.
“The Palestinians’ transition from suicide bomber terrorism to mass demonstrations, deliberately unarmed, will confront us with challenges that are not so simple,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged in a television interview.
Prompted by the recent upheavals in the Arab world, the Israeli military has been preparing for possible large-scale popular demonstrations by Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, said Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the army’s chief spokesman.
But soldiers in the Israeli-held Golan Heights were caught unprepared when hundreds of Palestinian protesters from Syria breached a border fence and then tore it down, pelting soldiers with rocks before they were driven back by gunfire, which killed at least two people.
The White House accused the Syrian government of inciting the violence to divert attention from the demonstrations against the Syrian regime. “Such behavior is unacceptable,” press secretary Jay Carney said.
Ten protesters were killed in clashes on Lebanon’s frontier with Israel.
“The barrier of fear has been broken,” Yoav Limor, military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 1 television, told viewers. “The army has to prepare for a new reality and figure out what to do.”
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