Forest Fires Erupt in Israel; Linked to Uprising : 4 Arab Suspects Held; Officials Blame Palestinian Militants for Many of Blazes

Dozens of forest fires erupted across Israel on Saturday, and police detained at least four Arabs suspected of setting blazes as part of the Palestinian rebellion against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian students battled Israeli troops in the most widespread protests since the army reopened high schools in the West Bank after a four-month closure.

In the Gaza Strip, a 9-year-old Arab boy was hospitalized in serious condition after being hit by rubber bullets in the head, chest and right shoulder, doctors at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital said.

Army Checking Report

The boy was hit when soldiers fired rubber bullets to disperse a crowd trying to stop them from beating a 17-year-old Arab youth in Gaza, an Arab reporter said. The army said it was checking the report.

Firefighters have blamed Palestinian militants for setting more than half the fires that have ravaged at least 35,000 acres of forests and farms since early May.

David Angel of the Jewish National Fund, which manages Israeli forests, said at least three of Saturday’s major fires were caused by arson.

He said a helicopter crew spotted two Arab teen-agers setting a blaze with torches and rags near the communal farm Maalei Hahamisha northwest of Jerusalem and police arrested one of the youths. Another Arab was arrested as a suspected arsonist in northern Israel, he said. Fires also were reported near the coastal cities of Ashkelon and Haifa.

“When the fire starts in five or six places at the same time, there is no doubt that it’s arson,” Angel said.

Israel radio reported that police arrested three residents of the Arab village of Jisr ez Zarqua in northern Israel on suspicion of arson. It was not immediately clear if the detainee Angel referred to was among the three.

‘Destroy and Burn’

In a leaflet issued last week, underground leaders of the Palestinian uprising urged Arabs to “destroy and burn all the enemy’s agricultural and industrial resources.”

In the West Bank city of Hebron, about 200 students shouting “Allahu akbar!” (Arabic for God is great) piled stones and burning tires on main roads through much of the city, an Arab reporter said.

The students threw stones, and soldiers fired in the air to end the hourlong protest, the reporter said. There were no reports of injuries.

Dozens of Arab students also demonstrated in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Al Birah, the reporter said.

An army official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed protests in Hebron. He did not elaborate and said he had no reports of student demonstrations elsewhere.

The army closed the West Bank’s nearly 1,200 schools in February, saying they had become centers of violence. The schools were gradually reopened in the past three weeks, and high school classes resumed Monday.

About 190 Palestinians and two Israelis have been killed since Dec. 9, when the Arab uprising began in the territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

May Again Close Schools

A military source said the army might reclose some schools where disturbances persist but had no immediate plans to shut down the whole West Bank school system.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, the attorney for Mubarak Awad, an Arab-American advocate of civil disobedience, said Awad vowed to physically resist efforts to deport him. Under a Supreme Court ruling, Awad’s deportation order was to take effect at midnight Saturday, but Israeli officials refused to say when he would be deported.

Awad’s Palestinian lawyer, Jonathan Kuttab, met with Awad for about 20 minutes Saturday.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ordered Awad deported in May, saying he helped incite the Arab uprising.

Awad, 44, has said he supports civil disobedience against Israel but is opposed to violent forms of protest. The Jerusalem-born Awad became a U.S. citizen during a 13-year stay in the United States but returned to Israel in 1983 to found the Center for the Study of Nonviolence.

Curfew Imposed

In other developments, the army imposed a curfew on a district of Gaza City in the occupied Gaza Strip and ordered 2,500 Arab adults to report to area schools for a surprise identity document check, a military source said.

The check, which found 12 people without proper IDs, was conducted to enforce army orders that all Gaza residents must exchange their Israeli-issued ID cards for new documents, the source said.

Underground leaders have called on Palestinians to boycott the exchange, believed intended to break an Arab tax boycott since Palestinians must show tax receipts to get new cards.

Peres Dismisses Statement

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, in an interview with Israel Radio, dismissed as insignificant an Arab summit resolution passed last week in Algiers calling for a Palestinian state.

“Let’s say (the summit) will decide that Israel has to return all the territories. Does that obligate Israel? It is childish talk, all this issue. They demand Israel agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Does this obligate us?” Peres asked.

“They are again trying to make a policy from the impossible, a policy from verbosity.. . . They cannot force us to do anything, they cannot obligate us to agree to what they say,” Peres said.

But Ezer Weizman, a Cabinet minister without portfolio and a dove in Peres’ Labor Alignment, said the summit’s endorsement of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the key to Middle East peace bolsters his long-held view that Israel will eventually have to talk to PLO chief Yasser Arafat.

“This strengthens the fact . . . that without a serious Palestinian factor, nothing will move forward, and my evaluation is that we will see Arafat becoming more moderate,” Weizman said.

“Instead of looking for moderate leaders, it is worthwhile to moderate the leadership that appears to have the largest influence on the Arab world,” he added.