Arabs, Israelis Vie to Manage Slayings Crisis : Mideast: Three more die in protests. Israel seeks to dampen unrest; Palestinian leaders try to capitalize on it.

Trying to navigate the chaotic and violent rush of protest that arose after the weekend massacre of seven Palestinian day laborers, Israeli and Palestinian leaders embarked Monday on feverish rival campaigns to manage the crisis to their own advantage.

The maneuvering occurred against a backdrop of persistent violence not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also inside Israel, where Arab citizens took to the streets in a rare display of support for the intifada , or Palestinian uprising.

Israeli soldiers Monday killed three Palestinians and wounded about 100 in the Gaza Strip, where residents defied curfew orders for the second day in a row and poured into the streets to burn tires and attack Israeli soldiers with stones.

In Nazareth, in Israel proper, police used tear gas to break up mobs of stone-throwing Arab youths who broke windows in Israeli businesses and a tax office.

In all, at least nine Palestinians have been killed since news about the slaying of the day laborers broke early Sunday. The laborers were gunned down at a highway crossroads near the Israeli town of Rishon le Zion by a young Israeli impersonating a soldier.

Beneath the boiling level of protest, the attention of Israeli officials and Palestinian nationalist leaders was turning on what to do next. The Israelis tried to keep the Rishon le Zion shooting from feeding the intifada , while the Palestinians looked for ways to boost it.

The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir focused on trying to ensure that the Palestinian protests do not turn into a new, militant phase of the intifada , which has been going on for 29 months.

“I believe the other side is going to do its utmost to give new life to the uprising,” advised Maj. Gen. Natan Vilnai, Israel’s top commander in Gaza. “There is no doubt we have a grave problem here with the growing number of people who have a personal account to settle with us.”

During the last year, the army had designed a step-by-step strategy to combat Palestinian protests by hunting down, capturing or shooting core activists while reminding the population at large of their economic weakness through heavy taxation, fines and collection of fees.

The strategy challenged the notion that the uprising is a wide-based popular revolt that cannot be crushed by military means. If not crushed outright, the intifada could at least be brought under control by eliminating militants and tiring out everyone else.

The fresh outbreak of mass unrest, especially in Gaza, threatened to turn into a setback, and the army has moved swiftly to break the back of the protests. In a sense, Israel is doing what it did not do early in the uprising: take the intifada seriously enough to crack down hard and fast.

Foreign Minister Moshe Arens suggested that Palestinian leaders will attempt to exploit passions to escalate violence.

“The important thing, of course, is that people (who) claim leading positions among the Palestinian population and that leaders in the Arab world restrain themselves and do not cynically try to use this terrible act as a means of fanning further violence,” Arens said in an interview on American television.

Israel is also trying to fend off renewed criticism of its handling of the uprising. The Foreign Ministry is launching a propaganda campaign through its embassies abroad to explain its policies, and, according to government radio, “ministers are taking every opportunity to voice their dismay” over the Rishon le Zion shooting.

Israel’s Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres, arriving in Cairo for a meeting of the Socialist International, said: “We are ashamed, all of us, and sorry. It’s a crazy man and a crazy situation, killing innocent people. We shall take all the necessary measures to bring to court the man who did it.”

Meanwhile, unidentified Israeli officials told Israeli reporters that the Palestine Liberation Organization has put out an order for Arabs to take up arms in response to the Rishon le Zion killings and the army crackdown.

The report contradicted attitudes expressed in public by Palestinian leaders here. Because they have long preached moderation--and have faced criticism from extremist Palestinians for it--a violent escalation would threaten their leadership, they maintain.

Instead of preaching violence, they are holding a weeklong hunger strike to press for U.N. intervention on behalf of Palestinians. Beneath the shade of pine trees on the grounds of the International Red Cross building, 18 Palestinian leaders are camping out, subsisting on water and granting interviews with reporters.

In part, the leaders were playing to a home audience that is frustrated by the turn of events.

“Moderate leaders have asked the population to be restrained. We have been criticized for achieving nothing--and now this massacre happens. This is a big blow for us,” said Radwan abu Ayash, a top PLO contact in Jerusalem. “We are hunger-striking to show we are not sitting at home doing nothing.”

The hunger strikers are also playing to diplomatic audiences abroad. They expect that Arab leaders scheduled to meet next week in Iraq will put the Palestinian problem high on their agenda and that even President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will take up the issue during their summit next week. The hunger strikers have already met with European consuls in Jerusalem.

“We need something positive to come out of all this,” declared Abu Ayash.

While the public leadership sought help from outside, the clandestine leadership of the uprising issued a special directive designed to channel newly unleashed energies inside the West Bank and Gaza. The leaflet asks Palestinians to go on strike for three days, to desist from traveling abroad or working inside Israel for a week, to stop buying Israeli goods and to refuse to deal with occupation authorities on any basis, including the taking out of drivers’ licenses.

In the Gaza Strip, where leanings toward violence have been more marked than almost anywhere else, the uproar of the past two days was aggravated by the fact that all the victims of the Rishon le Zion shooting were from the Gaza Strip.

In Gaza on Monday, one of the fatalities was a 17-year-old girl shot in the head. Another victim, 55, was wounded fatally in the chest, and the third was a 22-year-old shot through the neck.

In the West Bank, Palestinians were forced indoors as the army beefed up its troop strength to keep protests at bay. Helicopters flew over towns and villages on the lookout for demonstrators and rock throwers.

There were also reports Monday of a possible revenge killing in the wake of the shootings. A 42-year-old Israeli restaurant owner was stabbed to death in Ein Kerem, near Jerusalem, but the motives were unclear, according to press reports. An Arab man was also killed with a knife in Ein Kerem in a separate incident that some newspapers attributed to an argument with a group of Israelis over the wave of violence.

For the first time since the beginning of the Arab uprising more than two years ago, Arab citizens of Israel spontaneously shut down several towns. Vandals defaced walls in Haifa with swastikas, and black flags of mourning hung over several Arab-Israeli towns and villages. In Jerusalem, rock-throwing in several Arab suburbs made streets impassable.

For Israel, the Arab protests raise the uncomfortable possibility that the intifada might take root inside Israel, where Arab citizens are continually chafing at their second-class status and identifying more and more with the Palestinian revolt.

The suspect in the Rishon le Zion shooting appeared in court Monday, his hands bound and feet shackled. He was identified as Ami Propper. A judge ordered him to be kept in custody for 15 days while psychiatrists examine him.

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