U.N. Official Barred From 2 Gaza Camps; 33rd Arab Slain

Israeli troops barred a United Nations official from two Gaza Strip refugee camps Tuesday, and the official left a third camp voluntarily to avoid provoking a demonstration as Israeli gunfire claimed its 33rd Palestinian fatality in the continuing violence in the occupied territories.

An army tally of casualties in the occupied territories since Dec. 9, when the wave of violence began, also listed 257 Palestinians wounded by gunshot--184 in the Gaza Strip and 73 in the West Bank.

According to the army count, 61 soldiers and 40 Israeli civilians have been injured in the unrest. The great majority of these injuries are believed to have been connected with stoning incidents, and the only Israeli seriously injured so far has been a soldier stabbed in the back.

The most serious of Tuesday’s clashes again took place in the Gaza Strip, and they coincided with separate visits to the area by Marrack Goulding, the U.N. undersecretary general, and Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Army Patrol Attacked

The army said Palestinians armed with knives attacked an army patrol in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border. The troops tried to fend off the attackers with smoke bombs, according to the army radio, but failed and opened fire when their lives were considered to be in danger.

An army spokesman said three Palestinians and a soldier were wounded in the incident and one Palestinian killed. He identified the dead man as Mohammed Yousef Yazouri, 30, and said he is believed to be related to Basel al Yazouri, who died Monday from wounds in a clash with Israeli soldiers last weekend. The army said that Mohammed Yazouri was a member of Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) and that he had served a three-year sentence for attempting to take over an Israeli civilian bus near Jerusalem.

The army imposed a curfew throughout the Gaza Strip, sealing seven of eight refugee camps in the area. This made it difficult for U.N. and Palestinian organizations to maintain contact with sources of information in the area. As a result, it has become more difficult in the last few days to check reports of clashes and to confirm fatalities.

This situation was reflected in a report by the army radio Tuesday that a second Palestinian had been shot to death by soldiers in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza City. Later, an army spokesman said the report had been erroneous and that two camp residents had been slightly wounded when a patrol opened fire against attackers armed with stones and nail-studded clubs.

The Palestine Press Service, which supports the Palestine Liberation Organization, also reported a fatality in Jabaliya, but said it could provide no details. U.N. officials said that they, too, had heard reports of a fatality but were unable to confirm it.

Goulding, the U.N. undersecretary general, tried to visit Jabaliya on Tuesday morning but was turned away by soldiers who informed him that it was a closed military area. Later he was denied access to the neighboring Beach refugee camp.

Goulding arrived here late last week after the U.N. Security Council unanimously criticized the way Israel is dealing with the unrest. The council called on Israel to rescind expulsion orders issued last week against nine West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians accused of inciting disorder.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has refused to meet with Goulding, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Goulding on Monday that Israel regards any intervention by the United Nations as “damaging to our goal of bringing calm to the territories.”

Later Tuesday, Goulding stopped at the Mughazi refugee camp, situated midway in the Gaza Strip, the only camp in the area not under army curfew. Goulding said later that he decided against entering the facility.

“There was a row of burning barrels,” he said. “Beyond that there was quite a large crowd, I’d say several hundred people. We sent one car forward, and they said we were welcome to go in. But he reported back that they were in a very excited state . . . and we took the decision that if we went on, there was a risk of a confrontation developing.”

The incident was the subject of a tense exchange between Goulding and Rabin in front of reporters at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

“I have made clear throughout that the last thing we want to do is to provoke any confrontations,” Goulding said.

“I understand in one camp we didn’t allow you in and in another camp the local people didn’t allow you in,” Rabin commented.

Goulding shot back, “Your intelligence is better than that, minister.”

Israel radio quoted Rabin as speaking “scathingly,” at a private meeting with Goulding, about the lack of international help for Palestinian refugees. For all their talk about human rights, Rabin reportedly said, individual nations have ignored repeated Israeli suggestions that they adopt individual camps for rehabilitation.

Goulding told reporters that Rabin had explained Israel’s policies concerning the unrest and that he had outlined U.N. objections to those policies.

The U.N. official is to report back to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar by the middle of next week on the situation in the occupied territories. He indicated that he will have some specific suggestions but refused to elaborate.

On the West Bank, meanwhile, a commercial strike continued throughout mostly Arab East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus and other centers. The strike is a form of memorial to the people killed in the unrest.

There were scattered disturbances throughout the area, the most serious of them in Nablus, where the army reported four people wounded by soldiers. Palestinian sources said that at least four times that number suffered gunshot wounds.

Appeal Plans Dropped

In a related development, lawyers for four of the nine Palestinians scheduled for expulsion said they had dropped plans to appeal the orders after it was made clear that the authorities would refuse to disclose much of the evidence against them.

The army routinely classifies as secret much information in such cases, ostensibly out of fear that to introduce it in an open court would compromise informers and other clandestine sources of information.

Dropping the appeals means that four of the nine Palestinians affected could be expelled at almost any time. According to Israeli press reports, the government may expel the men through its self-proclaimed security zone into southern Lebanon, since other neighbor countries have refused to receive them and Beirut authorities are in no position to oppose their entry.

It was not clear how expulsion into an area of continuing civil war among rival Lebanese and Palestinian factions would square with the official Israeli government statement: “Deportations will be carried out in a humane way and in a way which does not endanger the deportees’ safety.”