Growing Tension With U.S. Feared by Shamir : Mideast: The Israeli leader launches a rare attack on the United States as he prepares for a trip to Washington.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir warned Tuesday that his government is entering a period of tension with the United States over Washington’s insistence that Israel abandon the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In a rare direct attack on U.S. policy toward Israel, Shamir told members of his Likud Party that the United States is trying to get Israel to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a move the Israelis reject.

“We are not seeking a confrontation--on the contrary, we wish to avoid it,” he was quoted as saying on government radio. “But we will not give in, not even to the United States.”

Shamir is expected to visit Washington in mid-November amid reports that the Bush Administration is frustrated with the lack of progress in getting Middle East peace talks under way. The United States is Israel’s chief ally and provides it with military and economic aid of $3 billion a year.

Recently, Secretary of State James A. Baker III proposed bringing Israel, Egypt and the United States together for preliminary talks on the makeup of a Palestinian peace delegation.

The plan has found no acceptance among the Israelis or potential Palestinian participants. Last week, Shamir dismissed the proposal as unnecessary and “inflated into something politically big.” On Monday, the PLO rejected the plan because it includes no role for the group, which claims to represent all Palestinians. Leaders of the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza spurned the plan as “suspicious.”

Despite this series of rebuffs, Washington has not acknowledged that Baker’s proposal has reached a dead end. Commenting on the PLO’s rejection of the plan, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said: “We are working to try to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to a dialogue. . . . Obviously, the Palestinians have to find a way to respond positively and to move forward.”

She said that “we do not consider any of these statements to be anybody’s last word,” apparently referring to the rejection by Israel as well as by the PLO.

The Baker invitation to Israel and Egypt was the latest link in a chain of diplomatic initiatives meant to get peace talks off the ground. It followed an effort by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to bring Israelis and Palestinians together in Cairo. The two sides were meant to talk about Shamir’s proposal to have elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Under the Shamir plan, a delegation selected by the voters would negotiate with Israel for the immediate future of the territories. Shamir insists that his plan requires no special diplomacy to put it into effect, even though no Palestinian leader has yet agreed to it.

Shamir views the proposals by Baker and Mubarak as traps that would lead inevitably to talks with the PLO and the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

The apparent stiffening of his stance toward Washington completes a pair of diplomatic somersaults for the prime minister. For months, he encouraged both the United States and Egypt, the only Arab country that recognizes Israel, to get involved in the peace process. When both did, Shamir rejected their initiatives.

The Labor Party, the junior partner in Israel’s coalition government, has expressed interest in both the Baker and Mubarak plans but lacks the strength in the Cabinet to overcome the opposition of Shamir and his Likud Party.

As diplomacy has dragged on, the toll of Palestinian dead at the hands of Israeli soldiers has escalated sharply this month. Israeli soldiers killed 20 Palestinians in the first two weeks of October. In the course of the year, only the toll in the first two weeks of April, when 23 Arabs died, was higher.

In recent weeks, the army has been operating under orders that permit troops to fire at any masked person who flees and does not stop when ordered to do so.

An army spokesman said that leaders of the uprising have called for stepped-up attacks on soldiers and that the call may have led to higher fatalities among the Arabs.

More than 550 Palestinians, including children and women, have been killed by soldiers since the uprising began 22 months ago. Thirty-five Israelis, mostly civilians, have been killed.

In the past month, the army has been confiscating appliances, furniture and machinery belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur. The townspeople have refused to pay taxes to the occupation government, and Israel has vowed to break the protest.

BACKGROUND

It started innocuously enough. On Dec. 9, 1987, rumors swept the Gaza Strip that a traffic accident the day before involving an Israeli truck and two Palestinian vans in which a number of Palestinians were killed was deliberate on the part of the Israeli driver and in response to the murder of an Israeli shopkeeper. Violence quickly spread throughout the Gaza Strip and then to the West Bank and has waxed and waned ever since. But all efforts of the Israeli army to put down the uprising--quickly labeled in Arabic as the intifada-- have proved fruitless. The toll in the intervening 22 months: more than 550 Palestinians killed and 35 Israelis dead. And as an offshoot, Palestinians have assassinated about 100 of their fellow Arabs accused of collaborating with the Israelis.