Arab Gunmen Wound Israeli Contractor

Masked Arab gunmen shot and wounded an Israeli drilling contractor Thursday in a rare use of firearms by Palestinian rioters in the occupied territories, military officials said.

The use of guns, near this occupied village, appeared to defy a ban imposed by the uprising’s leadership with the goal of retaining world sympathy and avoiding massive Israeli retaliation.

Military officials said two gunmen, firing a pistol and a Kalashnikov rifle, wounded Adi Zabari, 44, in the legs. The gunmen fled, and Zabari, from the Israeli town of Ashkelon, was taken to a hospital where his condition was described as fair.

The army clamped a curfew on the area.

Zabari told investigators he had been drilling water wells for 15 years in the Gaza Strip.

Air Raid in Lebanon

The shooting coincided with an Israeli air raid on what the army called “terrorist bases” in Lebanon.

Israeli warplanes divebombed a hilltop base of the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in mountains south of Beirut, Lebanese security sources said.

The Moscow-oriented front, headed by Nayef Hawatmeh, is one of the eight factions making up Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.

Six Israeli fighter-bombers took part in the air attack, demolishing a two-story building used as a base by the Palestinian front with four direct hits, police said.

Lebanese police said one guerrilla was killed and another was wounded along with his 2-year-old son.

Meanwhile, trials began Thursday involving the burial alive of four Arabs by an army bulldozer Feb. 5 in a West Bank village and the beating Feb. 24 of two Palestinians near Nablus, which was photographed by a CBS News crew.

Neighbors soon rescued the buried Palestinians. The beating was televised around the world and aroused international protest. Yair Nissimi and Dror Segen-Cohen, both army privates, pleaded guilty in the burial case to reduced charges of shameful behavior. The plea bargain would give Nissimi 2 1/2 months in jail and Segen-Cohen 2 months, and both would be placed on probation.

A three-judge panel is to rule March 29 on whether to accept the arrangement.

Mustafa Hamdan, one of those buried, said of the plea bargain: “They buried four people alive. If an Arab did that, they would have given him 200 years.”

Defense lawyer Josef Danai said in court that the burial was “an instance of letting off steam, revenge and deterrence” by soldiers in difficult circumstances.

“We have to view this in its proper proportion,” he said. “After all, what did they do? They spilled a little earth on them. The tractor driver said an ant could have gotten out of it.”