HILMI Shawash was a handsome 11-year-old boy, with big, curious eyes and dark-brown hair. On Sunday, he left school in the West Bank village of Hussan, southwest of Jerusalem, to walk home. He never got there.
Yesterday, more than 2,000 villagers marched through Hussan in a furious funeral procession, proclaiming Hilmi the latest martyr to the Palestinian cause, and urging the destruction of the Jewish settlement of Betar.
Hilmi, according to one of his schoolmates, was attacked, for no reason, by a Jewish settler who first kicked him in the head, then hit him with his pistol; the way friends of the settler in question, Mr Nachum Kolman, tell it, Hilmi and his friends were throwing stones at settler cars, and Mr Kolman, in charge of security at one of Betar's settlements, was summoned. His car was stoned he jumped out and chased the stone throwers. Hilmi slipped and fell and Mr Kolman attempted in vain to revive him.
An autopsy has shown that Hilmi died from a blow to the left side of the head; Israeli police say the finding is inconclusive. Mr Kolman has been remanded in custody until Friday.
When Hilmi's body was laid to rest, about 200 youths took up their positions above an Israeli army patrolled road and began pelting the soldiers with stones. It was a scene that became a daily routine during the 1987-1993 Intifada uprising. In the past few weeks these Intifada-style clashes have become the norm again in the West Bank. And following the familiar script, Israeli troops used stun-grenades, tear gas and finally live ammunition this time, without any injuries.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, a delegation of Palestinian politicians had to be extricated by the Israeli army from amid a group of angry local settlers in downtown Hebron. And Hebrew newspapers, meanwhile, reported that the Israeli government is set to build 8,000 new homes in three West Bank settlements.
. The head of Mr Netanyahu's Likud parliament faction yesterday warned of a "holocaust" unless Israel's government acts against Jewish militants in Hebron. Mr Michael Eitan said: "If people openly identify with Baruch Goldstein and continue to say another Baruch Goldstein will arise, I think they could bring a holocaust first and foremost on the Jewish public in Hebron."
Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians as they prayed in Hebron's al-lbrahimi mosque in February 1994.