Last night Ihab Salim (18), a civilian, was shot in the head while sitting on his balcony. His brother and father where also hit by Israeli military snipers during the same incident, as the Israeli military continued its invasion and encirclement of the Old City in Nablus. The father, stable but still unconscious, is unaware that one of his sons has been killed and that the other is only surviving through life support. Today's deaths bring the total killed in the last two days of the invasion to 9 (including Mohamed Haysam Fawkih, killed while observing the situation from his roof).

A BLACK SATURDAY

The day started with news of Ihab's death at the hands of Israeli snipers and the continued curfew imposed by the Israeli military on the Old City (essentially entrapping the areas 30,000 residents under virtual house arrest). As essential supplies where fast running out, Palestinian medical volunteers where straining to deliver enough food and medicine to besieged civilians. Orange concussion grenade and tear gas canisters, remnants of smoke bombs, spent bullet cartridges, broken rocks, shattered bottles, barbed wire and destroyed barricades littering the streets of the casbah. All around the narrow streets, military jeeps, Border Police patrols, and APCs enforced a strict curfew, frequently detaining and threatening medical personnel trying to do their jobs.

I personally witnessed a woman enter a state of panic as a result of the harassment meted out by soldiers, another old woman terrified by a commander who insisted on inspecting the emergency vehicle she was being treated in from the heights of his APC, a relative of Nidal's faint as his bloody corpse was seized by Israeli soldiers and medical personnel who attempted to recover the body, the same woman in the Medical Relief field hospital being stitched up for bullet wounds in the hands, while another boy was treated for a shot in the leg, a PMRS volunteer attempting to evacuate a small boy who was injured by soldiers while a Border Police jeep tried to run him down, and of course the evacuation of the corpses of those killed, and the general mistreatment and harassment that soldiers where meting out to people who violated the curfew. All these sights fell within a general pattern of abuse that will be documented over the next few days and that have been written about elsewhere.

The killing of Nayef came as a particularly hard blow for many here, as it represents a serious blow to the intifada. I've never seen so many people loose control, cry and gasp in grief as uncontrollably as today since I've been in Palestine. Doctors with years of experience, police captains and fighters - all of whom have experienced death from up-close after so many years living under this occupation - where all reduced to tears. Something happened today that has struck a deep blow in the heart of everybody in Nablus. The resistance has been dealt a critical blow, and the expressions of anger today resembled more appeals of desperation than a sign of renewed determination. Nayef, like Zachariah Zubeidi in Jenin, had opposed the integration of the Brigades into a future Palestinian security force that would be approved by the Israelis, Egyptians and Americans, unless such a force first achieved an end to the Israeli occupation. He was also popular locally, as where many of those killed today, which means that the deaths where felt personally by many.

For some reason, Pontecorvo's film popped into my head as the night progressed and the picture of what had happened and who had been killed was filling out. Bodies carefully bent over radios and poised in front of television sets, ears and other sensory organs primed and waiting to gain any extra bit of information that would confirm or deny the wild rumors floating about. Unfortunately, the worst fears where confirmed when Nayef's body was shown on television - near an ambulance parked just outside of Rafidia Hospital - swimming in a crowd of angry men yelling "Allahu Akbar" and grieving over his body. The dejection in the faces around the TV sets and radios signaled another chapter of defeat in the long story of the Palestinian national liberation struggle.

And even though the Algerian paradigm of armed struggle is often said to have failed the Palestinian people, the occupiers have miscalculated if they believe this is one of the last pages of resistance in this long-story. In Pontecorvo's film, the tactical victory over the FLN is translated into a period of silence before the occupation forces are dealt a political defeat on the streets of Algeria by a population engaged in a spirited civil resistance that succeeds in achieving Algerian statehood. There are many differences of course in the two struggles, but tonight I keep thinking to this film - maybe because I'm looking for some hope in this situation, or maybe because the differences between the two experiences hold some clue as to what is going wrong in Palestine. In any case, the Israeli military pulled out in the early morning hours of Sunday, leaving behind a destroyed and broken city that is slowly trying to resume the rhythms of daily life here.