Arab Herdsman Slain by Settler on West Bank

A Jewish settler in the West Bank, trying to drive Palestinian shepherds away, shot one of them to death Thursday and seriously wounded another, according to Israeli Radio and Arab reports.

The radio said the incident began when an Israeli woman saw several Arab shepherds in a field between Turmus Aiya, a West Bank village 17 miles northeast of Jerusalem, and the Jewish settlement of Shillo.

She called other settlers; the Arabs responded with stones, and “one of the settlers opened fire, apparently on the stone throwers, killing one and wounding another,” the radio said.

A reporter for the Al Quds newspaper in Arab East Jerusalem said that Jewish settlers tried to drive Arabs out of fields in which they were working. He said that the dead man, Jude Abdallah Awad, 28, was shot in the head and that Rizik Abu Naim, 29, was wounded in the eye when he tried to help Awad.

Awad was at least the 174th fatal Palestinian victim of the uprising that began in the occupied territories last Dec. 9. An Israeli soldier and a teen-age Israeli girl have also been killed.

Earlier Thursday, Israeli troops shouting orders through megaphones told all West Bank merchants to close for three days or their shop doors would be welded shut. The army ordered the ban on commerce to punish Arabs in the West Bank for a one-day strike Wednesday called by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In another Thursday development, Israeli-backed Lebanese militiamen blew up dozens of homes in a southern Lebanon village in the final stage of an assault by Israeli forces against Arab guerrillas operating in the region just north of the Israeli border. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that more such raids by the militiamen could be expected.

Israel Television reported that the South Lebanon Army destroyed about 60 houses in the village of Maydoun, which Israeli officials said was used as a base by the radical Shia Muslim militia Hezbollah, or Party of God.

Israel reported that at least 40 guerrillas were killed in the operation, most of them Hezbollah members killed Wednesday in Maydoun, two miles north of Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone” in southern Lebanon. Two of the three Israeli soldiers killed in the raid were buried Thursday.

Sheik Subhi Tofeili, a Hezbollah leader, said that only 10 of his guerrillas were killed. He also said that Hezbollah would avenge the raid.

Meanwhile, police in Jerusalem detained Elias M. Zananiri, managing editor of the Palestine Press Service and of the Arabic-language edition of the weekly newspaper Al Awdah. Police spokesman Rafi Levy said that Zananiri would be held at least 48 hours for investigation on charges of inciting to riot.

Israeli authorities have closed the Arab-run press agency and Al Awdah, which also has an English edition.