Adel Zaanoun, Agence France Presse  --  Arab News

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip, 17 April 2004 — Effigies of US President George W. Bush were torched here yesterday as thousands of Palestinians vented their fury after he ruled out a return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

Some 3,000 Palestinians gathered in the town of Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City, and marched to the neighboring Jabalya refugee camp in a protest organized by the Islamic Jihad, while thousands more took part in other protests throughout the territory.

Chanting slogans, the crowds also set ablaze models of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and British Premier Tony Blair, a close ally of Bush. Bush enraged Palestinians by declaring on Wednesday that he supported Sharon’s plan to keep some settlements in the occupied West Bank and said the refugees would only be allowed to resettle in a future Palestinian state.

“Bush’s statement is a declaration of war against our people and a sign of his ever-growing support for the Israeli enemy,” said Nafez Azzam, a senior leader of Jihad in Gaza. “As long as the occupation continues, the resistance will continue,” he told reporters. Abdullah Shami, another senior Jihad figure who addressed the crowds, said Bush was “trying to impose a new reality on our land”.

Similar numbers also turned out at a Hamas-organized protest in the Shati refugee camp, on the outskirts of Gaza City, where a model of a Jewish settlement was set alight. The rally was also organized to commemorate the movement’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated in an Israeli air strike last month. “It (the Bush-Sharon agreement) is a new Balfour declaration by the criminal Bush,” said senior Hamas figure Sheikh Ahmed Bahr, in a reference to the 1917 declaration when the British committed themselves to a Jewish homeland in what was then Palestine.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy died after being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers during a protest yesterday against the Israeli wall. Hussein Mahmud Awad was pronounced dead by doctors at a hospital in Ramallah where he had been transferred for treatment after being struck in the head by a bullet fired at the protest at the village of Betuniya in the central West Bank.

Around 100 protesters had gathered at the protest after Friday prayers before beginning to throw stones, an AFP photographer witnessed.