About 30 people were injured as Palestinian police formed human chains, searched rooftops, and blocked streets with trucks, struggling to separate protesters from the soldiers and prevent more deaths after the funeral of Nader Isseid, 24, one of three Palestinians killed a day earlier.
"We don't want it to spread all over," said Brig. Gen. Abdel Fatah Jaidi, head of National Guard forces in Hebron. But if the casualty toll mounts, he said, "I cannot predict what will happen."
Two Palestinians were killed Tuesday and 100 injured in riots that broke out after two Jewish seminary students shot and killed a Palestinian man.
"The olive branch is down and the Kalashnikov is raised," marchers shouted at Isseid's funeral. "Revenge, revenge."
Palestinian police fired 21 shots into the air as Isseid's body, wrapped in the red, white, green and black Palestinian flag, was lowered into the grave. Isseid died after several hours in a coma with a bullet in his brain.
After the funeral, thousands of Palestinian marchers, many waving flags with militant Islamic slogans, marched toward the Israeli-controlled part of the city, where 500 Jewish settlers live.
At one point, Palestinians brought buckets and cartons filled with rocks to replenish the supplies of protesters on the front line.
Jaidi said Palestinian police had been ordered to be present in large numbers. "We want to keep losses to a minimum," he said.
Eighty people died in rioting last September that deteriorated into gun battles between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers.
There have been almost daily stone-throwing clashes in the West Bank since Israel broke ground March 18 for a new Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem.
Palestinians see the construction as an effort to preclude talks on the status of east Jerusalem, which they claim as a future capital. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists Israel's right to build in Jerusalem cannot be challenged.
This week's violence followed a summit in Washington between Netanyahu and President Clinton that failed to produce a formula for breaking the deadlock in peace talks, which ground to a halt following Israel's decision to go ahead with the construction of the Har Homa neighborhood.
A Palestinian delegation made up of Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's top deputy, and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat left for Washington yesterday to discuss ways of restarting the peace talks.
Netanyahu has accused Arafat of releasing Palestinian militants and giving tacit consent to terrorist attacks against Israel, such as a suicide bombing that killed three Israeli women in Tel Aviv last month.
Yesterday, Palestinian negotiator Erekat made the same charges against Netanyahu, criticizing him for the release on bail of the two Hebron students accused in Tuesday's shooting.
"It seems that he has given the green light to settler terrorism against Palestinians," he said. "We will put this issue to the Americans in order to direct the attention of the world to what is happening on the ground, which is a very grave situation."
AP PHOTO
A Palestinian protestor throws a firebomb at Israeli soldiers during clashes in the West Bank town of Hebron yesterday. The clashes followed the funeral procession of a Palestinian killed in fierce riots that erupted after two Jews were killed.