Calm Won’t Be Restored Soon, Rabin Warns

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin told his fellow ministers at their weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday that security officials have underestimated the severity of disturbances in the occupied territories and that they should not expect calm to return overnight.

“It requires patience, determination and the use of force within the limits of the law,” Rabin declared in an Israel radio interview during a visit later Sunday to the Gaza Strip, which has been the scene of the worst rioting.

He added, however, that restoration of order “is not going to be achieved in one or two days.”

Another Gazan was shot to death during a clash with security forces Sunday evening, and a second died of wounds he received in disturbances last month, a military spokesman confirmed. The two deaths brought to at least 29 the number of Palestinians killed by army gunfire since the unrest began Dec. 9.

Seven of the deaths have occurred during an upsurge of the violence in the last eight days, six of them in the Gaza Strip.

An army spokesman also reported “some people wounded” by gunfire Sunday but said he could not provide details. U.N. officials in Gaza said that more than 30 people were injured in at least four locations where the army opened fire. Substantially more than 200 Palestinians have been wounded by gunfire since the disturbances began last month.

Defense Minister Rabin, army Chief of Staff Dan Shomron and Shmuel Goren, head of the military government in the occupied territories, spent more than two hours briefing the Cabinet during a weekend in which the Gaza Strip was described as resembling a war zone.

Rabin on Saturday night ordered another major reinforcement of troops in the area, the third since the troubles began. But the defense minister added that there would be no change in army tactics used to deal with the widespread rioting.

“We are determined to make it clear that through the use of force, of public disorder, nothing will be achieved,” he told Israel radio. “I hope the people of the Gaza Strip will realize that the longer the disturbances will be continued, the greater will be their suffering. This has to be understood by all of them. And we are determined to carry out what we are supposed to do--to maintain relative tranquility.”

While there have been no shooting incidents on the West Bank in a week, scattered disturbances did occur there through the weekend. On Sunday, troops used tear gas and rubber bullets against demonstrators in Ramallah, Nablus and mostly Arab East Jerusalem. There were several arrests but no reports of serious injury.

The military commander of the West Bank, Gen. Amram Mitzna, ordered Birzeit University north of Jerusalem closed for a month after receiving undisclosed information that violent demonstrations were being planned there.

High U.N. Official in Area

Meanwhile, Marrack Goulding, the undersecretary general of the United Nations, met with U.N. officials in the occupied territories on the first day of a planned four-day fact-finding tour.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has refused to meet with Goulding, who is charged with reporting back to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar on the situation in the territories. He scheduled his trip after the Security Council unanimously criticized Israel’s handling of the unrest and called on the government here to rescind expulsion orders issued against nine West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians.

The nine are accused of “incitement and subversive activity on behalf of the terrorist organizations,” and Shamir has rejected the Security Council vote, in which the United States participated. He said he has nothing more to say about the matter to Goulding.

Meets Today With Peres

Goulding is scheduled to meet today with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. However, a Foreign Ministry spokesman stressed that “we treat this visit to the area as one of the ongoing meetings we conduct with the secretary general and his deputies.”

The spokesman added that Peres, too, will object to the Security Council resolution and emphasize that “any intervention by the U.N. can be damaging to our goal of bringing calm to the territories.”