Palestinian Slain; 26th in a Month : Shamir Calls Persistent Protests ‘New Kind of Arab Battle’

Unrest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip wound up a full month Friday with the death of the 26th Palestinian victim of army gunfire and the arrival of a senior U.N. official on a controversial fact-finding trip.

The violence continued despite extraordinary government efforts to suppress it, including the jailing for three to six months of “dozens” of Palestinian activists without trial.

Two of 20 refugee camps on the West Bank and three of eight in the Gaza Strip were under full or partial curfews Friday night, with their residents prohibited from moving outside their own homes.

Still, in a speech to the Tel Aviv Commercial Club quoted by Israel radio, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said it is too early to reach any “far-reaching conclusions” about the meaning of the unprecedented unrest.

Disturbances Unusual

Rabin said that what makes the latest disturbances unusual is that they are widespread, break out simultaneously, and have gone on for an extraordinarily long time. And he added that “the potential for a new situation exists” in the territories.

However, Rabin stated, Israel’s policy remains to do everything in its power to restore order in the areas and to demonstrate to the residents, the neighboring Arab countries, and the international community that Israel will not bow to violence and threats.

In an interview on Israel television Thursday night, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir termed the demonstrations part of “a new kind of Arab battle against the State of Israel.” They are meant to provoke “a violent Israeli response that will cause casualties,” he said.

The hope, he added, is that the casualties “will undermine world opinion, and world opinion will bring pressure on Israel, and so on and so forth.”

Concedes Expulsion’s Effect

Shamir conceded that Israel’s controversial announcement Sunday that it intends to expel nine Palestinians from the territories had “heated up the disturbances.”

After a 10-day lull in fatal shooting incidents, four more Palestinians died from army gunfire this week in the wake of the expulsion announcement.

Shamir said supporters of the nine “are now attempting through disturbances to prevent their being deported. But when the deportations are carried out, I assume they will have a calming effect. . . . A situation like this cannot continue for a long time.”

On Friday, however, within hours of Shamir’s comments, troops opened fire again, this time in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. An army spokesman said Friday night that according to preliminary reports, a patrol in the camp was surrounded by “hundreds” of residents and opened fire after non-lethal means failed to extricate them from what they considered a “life-threatening situation.” The spokesman said he had no official word on casualties.

Fatality Identified

However, Israel television, U.N. officials, and Palestinian sources all reported that Khalid Awawdeh, 22, was killed in the clash and up to five more residents were wounded.

The army spokesman did confirm the death reported by U.N. officials Thursday night of 15-year-old Zaki Musalem, shot during a demonstration at the Mughazi refugee camp near Bureij. Eight other Gazans were wounded in Thursday’s disturbances, two of them seriously.

Gaza has been the principal focus of unrest in the territories ever since it was triggered by a fatal accident in which an Israeli truck collided with two vans full of Palestinian workers. Four Gazans died in the mishap, and rumors, later proven false, spread that the collision had actually been planned as an act of retribution for the fatal stabbing a few days earlier of an Israeli plastics merchant.

The next day, Dec. 9, Hatem Sissi, 17, was shot to death by army troops during an anti-Israeli demonstration at the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City. Sixteen other Gazans were wounded that day, and the unrest has continued ever since.

17th Gaza Fatality

Awawdeh was the 17th person from the Gaza Strip to be killed.

More than 200 Palestinians have been wounded by gunfire during the disturbances, and both the United States and the United Nations, among others, have criticized Israel’s use of lethal force to put them down.

Underlining the government’s rejection of international criticism, Shamir reiterated Friday that he would refuse to meet with U.N. Under Secretary General Marrack Goulding, who arrived on a fact-finding mission following a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the planned expulsions.

“We, as it is known, don’t accept this decision of the United Nations, and we won’t cooperate with any step aimed at carrying out this decision,” Shamir said in his television interview.

The prime minister said Israeli forces “are making efforts to avoid loss of life, since loss of life is the goal sought by PLO personnel. They are celebrating the death of every dead Palestinian. This runs counter to our interests, and we therefore are attempting to avoid it.”

Rabin, in his speech to Tel Aviv businessmen, said that “as a Jew, as an Israeli, and as defense minister, my conscience is clean.”

Meanwhile, military sources said that 30 West Bank Palestinian activists had been served with administrative arrest orders last Tuesday and Wednesday and that others from both the West Bank and Gaza Strip are still being jailed.

The procedure allows the military government to imprison persons whom it deems to be threats to security for up to six months without trial. The orders are renewable.

Palestinian sources said those affected appeared to represent a cross section of activists in their late 20s, ranging from university students to unionists. Two were among 1,150 former prisoners released as part of a controversial 1985 exchange for three Israeli soldiers captured in Lebanon. Another is a field worker for the West Bank human rights organization, Law in the Service of Man (Al Haq), which is affiliated with the International Commission of Jurists.

The sources said two others are Israeli Arab citizens from the village of Umm el Fahm, in the north of the country.

The United States has repeatedly protested the use of administrative detention as a violation of due process and counterproductive to a peaceful understanding between Israel and the Palestinians of the territories.

In all, the authorities have arrested about 2,000 Palestinians in connection with the month of unrest.