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The Arab refugee camps in the occupied territories quickly became centers of protest; no fewer than six were placed under total curfew as a result of violent demonstrations. In the Jubaliya camp outside Gaza City, six youths were wounded by gunfire. At the Deheisheh camp near Bethlehem, a grenade was hurled at a military vehicle. No Israeli was injured, but in the subsequent melee seven Arabs were wounded by gunfire. At a girls' school in Ramallah, a 16-year-old student was shot in the hip. In Gaza City and Rafah, scenes of the most violent rioting, huge rocks were hurled at passing Israeli cars and military patrols. As Israeli troops responded, at least 40 Palestinians were injured by rifle fire. In Nablus, Arab youths barricaded the road outside the Balata refugee camp with a wall of refrigerators. In the Judean Hills, the Haifa-Jerusalem train was brought to a halt by obstacles on the track, then stoned by Arab youths.
After a day of rioting, the entire city of Rafah (pop. 80,000) in the Gaza Strip was placed under curfew by Israeli authorities. When East Jerusalem's Supreme Muslim Council called for a protest march to the Temple Mount, Israeli riot police and troops moved in and arrested 32 of the leaders before the marchers had taken ten steps. Shaking with fury, a prominent East Jerusalem resident, Anwar Nusseibeh, declared: "The transgression on the Temple Mount was not against us; it was against the values of everyone who believes in God. All we intended to do today was to offer our respect for those who died."
On the Temple Mount, an eerie calm prevailed. Shattered glass fragments, almost jewel-like in their symmetry, lay in piles outside the walls of the Dome of the Rock. Inside the eight gates to the Mount, Israeli troops and police stood guard, restricting the entry of would-be worshipers. The Israelis clearly feared that the entire area might become a staging ground for further demonstrations against the Israeli presence in the vicinity of the sacred mosque.
The handful of Arabs who sat on the ground near the mosque insisted bitterly that Goodman had somehow acted as an instrument of official Israeli policy. Demanded a bearded young man: "How could the Israeli intelligence services not have known that this would happen? How could the man be crazy and yet be accepted into the Israeli armed forces?" Only a week before the incident, the Arabs asserted, leaflets had been distributed, purportedly from an ultranationalist Jewish group, warning that if Jews were not permitted to pray on the Mount, the place would be taken by force. In fact, two East Jerusalem newspapers had received a letter expressing this view a day or two before the shooting. Israeli authorities, evidently taking the threats seriously, had assured Muslims that the holy places would be protected.
