Israeli troops search for gaps in the fence along the border between Israel and Syria near (Photo:AP)MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights (AFP) – Hundreds of police fanned out across the Golan Heights on Monday in search of refugees who crossed over from Syria in some of the bloodiest violence in years along Israel's borders.
In Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories, people gathered to mourn the 14 people killed when Israeli troops opened fire on thousands of protesters who sought to breach its northern borders.
Hundreds were injured in the occupied Golan Heights, as well as in clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank and northern Gaza Strip as Palestinians marked the anniversary of Israel's founding in 1948, in an event known in Arabic as the "nakba" or "catastrophe."
Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said house-to-house searches were ongoing on Monday and roadblocks had been set up around the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams, where protesters who crossed over from Syria gathered.
"We arrested three Palestinians today who had come from Syria, two of them during searches in Majdal Shams," Rosenfeld told AFP.
"A fourth Palestinian managed to reach the Tel Aviv region where he has been taken into custody. Like the others, he is being questioned. We'll decide later what to do with them."
Israeli media identified the fourth Palestinian as Hassan Hijazi, 28, an employee of the Syrian education
Interviewed by Israel's privately owned Channel 10 television, Hijazi spoke of his pride at making it to Jaffa, his ancestral hometown, now a mixed Arab-Jewish district of greater Tel Aviv.
"This isn't Israel, this is my country," he said. "I don't want to go back to Syria. I want to stay here where my father and my great-grandfather were born and bring my family here."
Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told army radio the military remained "in a state of high alert in the north, the south and the centre."
Defence chiefs also extended a 24-hour lockdown on the occupied Palestinian territories which had been due to end at midnight on Sunday.
The White House accused Syria of stoking protests in the Golan Heights as a "distraction" from its repression of anti-government protests, which entered a third month Sunday.
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Shameful Israel did not prepare better, and many infiltrated into Israel some found even in Tel Avive! What when they had weapons or bomb-vests?
