CLASSES were suspended yesterday at Bir Zeit, the Palestinians' university campus on the bare hills outside Ramallah; the students had more urgent matters on their minds. They had to mourn their martyrs, the 30 students killed in last week's rioting in Ramallah, and mount a propaganda offensive on the Internet.
The student body at Bir Zeit, now 3,500 strong, has the reputation of being at the centre of radical Palestinian nationalism in the West Bank. Last Wednesday, their students marched to the Israeli checkpoints south of Ramallah to demonstrate against the failure of the Oslo peace agreements, and the Israelis' opening of a new tunnel close to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The march ignited violent rioting and shooting across the West Bank and Gaza and in old Jerusalem. The suddenness of the clashes appears to have taken even the Bir Zeit student leadership by surprise. They were shocked by the swiftness with which stone-throwing turned into a lethal exchange of gunfire by Palestinian and Israeli security forces, with students and their supporters caught between.
"I saw things those days which I will never forget," says Yasser Darweesh, 27, a former student and now photographer to Bir Zeit's public relations department. "I think from the beginning the Israeli soldiers set out to punish us.
"The march set out at 11am on Wednesday. By 3.30 in the afternoon they were firing live bullets at our students. By that time our march had been joined by members of several other schools in the area. On the second day they used a Cobra helicopter directly attacking one of the houses on the edge of Ramallah." His photographs of fleeing students, and Israeli soldiers in firing positions are now being broadcast worldwide through the university's Internet pages.
"I'll have 60 photographs on the Web by tonight," says Nigel Parry, from Scotland, who runs the information technology for the public relations department. Through the Internet the university churns out a digest of information about the crisis.
'Yes, we must keep going with the peace process, but Israel must implement all agreements'
"We have had more than 300 callers to our site on the Web," said Mr Parry. "We don't usually get as many callers in a whole week."
The use of the Internet is one of many signs of a huge advance in the Palestinian protesters' system for propaganda and communication. In the campaign of violent protest, the Intifada, which began in 1987, the Palestinian leaders relied on the fax for publicity to the outside world, and amateur radio between the various trouble spots. This time, the student leaders used mobile phones to bring instant news of fresh developments in Gaza and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
In Gaza the local radio, Voice of Palestine, gave minute by minute reports of the violence. "They were better than anything we had before," said Mohammed Dawwaz, a local journalist. "In the end the Israeli radio was reporting what Voice of Palestine was saying."
The other difference is that this time the Palestinians had their own security forces who could fire back - with weapons they have been given under the Oslo peace accords, say Israeli critics bitterly. Even in their mourning yesterday, the Bir Zeit student cadres showed a discipline they largely lacked in the Intifada years. Cohorts of young men in trainers and jeans arrived at the houses of the dead, shook hands with the family, muttered a few words and then quietly left. Behind them came the female students in sharply contrasting costume, half in jeans and sweaters, and half in long skirts and the heavy scarves, the uniforms of Islamic sisterhood.
"The protest was supposed to be peaceful, but the Israelis came at us with such unexpected aggression and violence," said Walid Watan, 29. "Yes, we must keep going with the peace process, but Israel must implement all agreements."
The thick-set young man spoke with the quiet authority of real power. As the leader of the Fatah students he is Yasser Arafat's man.
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