Israeli Girl Was Shot; Cause of Death Unclear : Guard May Have Slain Teen-Ager, State TV Reports; Mourners at Funeral Demand Revenge

A preliminary army investigation into what was originally reported as the stoning death of a West Bank Jewish teen-ager shows the girl had also been shot in the head, apparently by an Israeli security guard accompanying her, Israeli Television reported Thursday night.

The army refused comment pending completion of its probe, but a senior government source who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the television account.

It was unclear whether the cause of the girl’s death was the bullet wound or stones hurled at her, reportedly by the mother of one of two Palestinian villagers shot to death by a security guard during the same incident. The girl, Tirza Porat, was one of 16 Jewish teenagers who had been hiking near the West Bank village of Beita on Wednesday, accompanied by two armed Israeli guards, when the trouble began.

Took Weapons Away

The circumstances of how the girl was shot also were unclear, although both Israel Television and Israel Radio reported that army investigators had found no evidence that any weapons were used except those carried by the guards. Although Palestinian villagers at some point took the weapons away from the two guards, they had by then run out of ammunition, Israel Television reported, quoting an unnamed “senior army official.”

The surprise revelations came only hours after the army said that Israeli troops, searching near Beita on Thursday afternoon, shot to death a Palestinian when he tried to flee a patrol. Fifteen other villagers were arrested in connection with the previous day’s violence, and the homes of five people accused of instigating or participating in the incident were demolished by high explosives, the army added.

Here in Karnei Shomron, about 3,000 angry mourners, most of them Jewish settlers, turned Thursday’s funeral of the dead girl into a political demonstration for tougher government measures against Arab protesters.

The 15-year-old Porat was the first Israeli civilian killed as a direct result of the violence that has rocked the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza for the last four months.

“The blood of the whole nation is boiling,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told the funeral gathering.

However, the reports on state radio and television raised serious new questions that could bear importantly on how the events that occurred in Beita on Wednesday are viewed. The accounts were said to be based on a report submitted by army investigators Thursday to Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron, the chief of staff.

It also was unclear why the military refused Thursday to comment on the cause of Porat’s death. Deputy army spokesman Col. Raanan Gissin confirmed in a telephone interview that there had been a pathological examination of Porat’s body before she was buried. Such examinations are usually meant to determine the cause of death.

Beita was sealed off by the army immediately after Wednesday’s violence, making it impossible for journalists to get firsthand reports from Palestinian witnesses.

According to the army’s original report, Porat was stoned to death by Beita residents after she and her companions, most of whom were from the nearby Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh, were either forced or lured into the village. The group had first come under attack by young Palestinian stone throwers, when they were passing outside the village, according to initial reports.

Guard Killed 2 Arabs

The army confirmed Thursday that two Palestinians from the village were shot to death by one of the Israeli guards accompanying the youths before the group was attacked inside the village.

While the first reports Wednesday suggested that the Jewish youths had been ambushed by scores of rock-throwing residents when they entered Beita, Israel Radio on Thursday quoted the preliminary army investigation as concluding that there was no premeditation.

“The report . . . stated clearly that the Arab residents had intended no harm to the Elon Moreh hikers,” state radio said. “The report says that the villagers, had they so wished, could have attacked many more children had they intended to kill. It also points out that many in the village tried to help extricate the hikers.”

In a television interview Wednesday night, Shomron called the Beita incident one of “unequaled gravity,” and he appealed to the 70,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories “to avoid any independent action in revenge.”

Settlers have been involved in the deaths of 10 of the at least 135 Palestinian victims of the unrest, which began last Dec. 9, and they have made several nighttime forays into Arab towns, damaging cars and other property.

Israel Radio reported Thursday night that “a number of Elon Moreh residents entered the village of Deir el Hatab, near their settlement, fired several shots and tried to set on fire a building in the village.” It added that an army unit in the area evicted them and that “steps will be taken against” the settlers involved, once the Passover holiday concludes this weekend.

Earlier, a caravan of nearly 400 Israeli vehicles streamed in a funeral procession from Elon Moreh through the Arab city of Nablus to Karnei Shomron, about 15 miles west. Arab residents watched from roofs and porches as the caravan took 20 minutes to pass through streets bristling with extra army troops.

The dead girl’s body, covered tightly in a black tarpaulin with a white Star of David on her chest, was carried in a dark blue van that served as a hearse.

Here, the crowd gathered on a brush- and rock-strewn hillside that forms a natural amphitheater overlooking the settlement’s cemetery. Most of the male mourners carried assault rifles or submachine guns slung over their shoulders, in addition to pistols jammed in their belts.

Several loudspeakers amplified the voices of Shamir and half a dozen other political and settlement leaders, whose angry eulogies echoed in the surrounding hills.

“The village Beita must be erased!” shouted Rabbi Chaim Druckman, a rightist member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) and one of the founders of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) West Bank settlement movement.

“This is a war like any other war,” said Deputy Prime Minister David Levy of Shamir’s rightist Likud Bloc. He declared that any comparisons of Porat’s attackers with animals “are an insult to the animal world,” and he called for more West Bank settlements and tough new measures against Arab protesters.

‘We Are Fanatics’

“If to defend our lives and children is fanaticism, then we are fanatics,” Levy added.

Settlement leader Benny Katzover, in a litany modeled after a part of the traditional Jewish Passover ritual, asked rhetorically why the government did not expel rioters, why it did not enact a death sentence for terrorists, why it did not instruct soldiers to automatically open fire on rock throwers and why it had let the situation in the territories deteriorate to such an extent.

Shamir and the other speakers were frequently interrupted by people in the crowd shouting “Revenge!” or “Expulsion!”

When Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna, the West Bank military commander, began to address the mourners, he was repeatedly interrupted by derogatory shouts and whistles. A product of the leftist kibbutz movement in Israel, he is blamed by many settlers for allegedly being too soft on Palestinian demonstrators.

“You should be fighting Arabs, not Jews!” shouted one heckler. “You murdered her!” charged a second. And a third suggested: “Go back to the kibbutz!” Others in the crowd tried to silence the hecklers.

Leaflets From Kahane

When the mourners returned to their automobiles parked along the main highway to the settlement, they found leaflets on their windshields from right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane.

“If any government in Israel is incapable of ensuring the full safety and lives of its citizens, it has no right to complain when and if these citizens fulfill the basic rights of self-defense of themselves and their families, according to the holy commandment: ‘He who comes to slay you, arise to slay him first,’ ” the pamphlet read in Hebrew and English.

“And to all of those that speak of anarchy and law and order, look around you and understand that today indeed there is complete anarchy and mass violation of the law by Arab mobs that hope to kill Jews and who are actively doing so,” the leaflet added. “A true Jewish response can only help restore law and order to Israel.”

Kahane advocates the expulsion, by force if necessary, of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories.