Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip are facing a cash shortage because of curfews imposed by the Israelis and strikes ordered by leaders of the Arab uprising, a United Nations official said today. The curfews also have disrupted food supplies to Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today. But the U.N. official said there is no food shortage in the region, where 650,000 Palestinians live. An 18-year-old Palestinian, meanwhile, was shot in the left leg today when soldiers clashed with Moslem worshippers leaving a mosque in the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, a local reporter said. An army spokesman had no information about the clash. The youths hurled rocks at the troops, who tried to disperse them with tear gas and rubber bullets and finally used live ammunition, wounding the man, who was identified as Ayman Taha, the reporter said. An 11-year-old Palestinian was shot in the leg late Thursday in Gaza's Shati refugee camp, hospital officials and Arab sources said. They said the boy was shot when youths hurled rocks at soldiers, who responded with tear gas and live gunfire. But an army spokesman said the Israeli army was not involved in the incident. ``This is not an army matter. This is a local police matter, and that's all I'm going to say,'' he said. The Gaza police spokesman was not in his office for comment, but a policeman who answered the telephone at Gaza police headquarters said he knew nothing of the incident. Since the Arab uprising began seven months ago, 222 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed. In the occupied West Bank, a curfew on Nablus, where 120,000 Arabs live, entered its fourth day today. Curfews also continued in the town of Qalqilya, the Beit Sahour village and Aidah refugee camp near Bethlehem, and the Ein Yabroud and Anabta villages. The longest curfew is in Beit Sahour, where villagers have been restricted to their homes for eight days after a symbolic protest in which Palestinians returned their Israeli-issued identity papers. A United Nations official who spoke on condition of anonymity said similar restrictions were imposed on the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, where the army imposed a 15-day curfew last month after the local Arab municipality resigned. Workers were barred from leaving to work in Israel for almost six weeks, resulting in a cash shortage, the U.N. official said. Curfews have been lifted in all Gaza camps, but strikes ordered by underground Palestinian leaders also have prevented workers from reaching their jobs, the official said. Nevertheless, U.N. food trucks delivering basic food products were continuing to arrive as scheduled, the official said. ``There is no food shortage in Gaza; what you've got is shortages of money,'' the U.N. source said. The Ha'aretz newspaper quoted an Israeli reserve soldier as saying, ``In the past few days I have given out watermelons, cantaloupes and some even come and beg me for bread. We know there is a severe food shortage in the camps.''
