Shamir Says He’ll Soon Offer New Mideast Peace Plan : Palestinian’s Death, 16 Injuries Mar a Rainy Christmas Day in Occupied Territories

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir announced Sunday that he will soon disclose a new Middle East peace plan and said a proposed visit to Israel by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could advance the peace process.

His new foreign minister, Moshe Arens, said meanwhile that Israel has to launch a diplomatic offensive to prove to the world that an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would endanger Israel’s existence.

Violence continued on a rainy Christmas Day in the occupied territories, where troops shot and killed a Palestinian youth and wounded 16. An Arab protester injured by soldiers earlier this month died of his wounds in a Jerusalem hospital, Israeli and Arab sources said.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers chased Muslim protesters who threw stones at them in Manger Square.

“It’s raining--and it’s raining stones and bottles,” a shopkeeper remarked to customers.

A thousand hardy pilgrims braved the rain and filled St. Catherine’s Church in Manger Square for midnight Mass, above the grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born.

The few visitors in evidence on Christmas morning huddled in the shelter of shops around the square against a strong wind, sipping spirits and trying to keep warm.

Troops shot 17-year-old Rael Edmaida in the head during a clash with stone-throwing demonstrators in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, doctors said. He died at Shifa hospital.

The 700,000 residents of Gaza held a general strike called by radical Muslim leaders of the uprising. Shops closed and transport halted throughout the strip.

“This is Christmas?” asked Mufid, co-owner of a dress shop off Manger Square, watching soldiers outside his store. “This is a military Christmas.”

Police said an East Jerusalem shopkeeper also was wounded when Palestinian nationalists hurled two fire bombs at his store. They said the shopowner may have been suspected of cooperating with Israel.

Shamir’s new government--a coalition between his rightist Likud Party and the center-left Labor Party led by Finance Minister Shimon Peres--met for the first time Sunday and appointed former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Benjamin Netanyahu as deputy foreign minister. Yossi Beilin also was appointed deputy to Peres in the Finance Ministry.

Shamir told Israel Television’s Arabic-language service that he will disclose his new peace plan in the “coming days and weeks.”

“I do not want to explain it to you because the details are still in discussion and in preparation,” Shamir said.

Mubarak, president of the only Arab country to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, said Saturday that he is willing to visit the Jewish state if the trip would help achieve a lasting Middle East peace.

“I will be very happy to receive him in Israel,” Shamir said.

Mubarak, who came to power in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat, has never visited Israel. He has met twice with the more dovish Peres since 1986 but pointedly rejected Shamir’s requests for a meeting during Shamir’s last two years as prime minister.

Shamir said he will propose to Israel’s Arab enemies “ways to act together to change the situation in the area for the positive.”

Arens, a member of Shamir’s Likud Party, told the Foreign Ministry leadership that Israel’s main goals were to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and to formulate peace initiatives to counter a PLO diplomatic offensive.

Israel’s closest ally, the United States, opened talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization this month after its chairman, Yasser Arafat, recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.