Baker Misinterpreted Shamir Stand, Israelis Say

Israeli officials said Thursday that Secretary of State James A. Baker III had misinterpreted a statement by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir when he criticized his new right-wing administration in testimony before Congress on Wednesday.

Baker, reacting to excerpts from an interview with Shamir published in the Jerusalem Post, suggested that the Israeli leader had created new preconditions for Israeli-Palestinian talks and pointedly invited his government to call the White House “when you are serious about peace.”

Israeli officials insisted Thursday, however, that Shamir had placed no new conditions on an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and that his remarks were misinterpreted by the Jerusalem Post and Baker. They said Shamir has yet to formulate his new administration’s next steps in the peace process, and they reproached the Bush Administration for not communicating directly with Israel.

“This is all based on a misunderstanding,” said Avi Pazner, a senior adviser to Shamir. “There are no new conditions. If we had been contacted by the United States, we could have explained that.”

Baker’s reference to possible new Israeli preconditions for negotiations came at the end of a lengthy statement expressing U.S. concerns about the new government’s apparent unreadiness to make compromises necessary to open an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.

However, Pazner and other aides to Shamir said he had merely reiterated Israel’s position that Israeli-Palestinian talks should occur within the framework of a several-stage peace process based on the 1979 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt. The accords spell out Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories as an interim solution.

In Washington, the White House on Thursday sought to soften Baker’s statements.

“We are very careful not to . . . to take sides and to place blame and so forth,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said at a news conference.

In Israel on Thursday, tensions mounted after a woman believed to be a Palestinian stabbed an 11-year-old Jewish boy in the back in Jerusalem.

The attack occurred in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood on the southern edge of Jerusalem while the boy was standing at a bus stop, witnesses said. The boy, identified as Idan Mizrachi, was transported to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, where he underwent surgery. The boy later was listed in good condition.

A large force of police and paramilitary border police converged on the area and sealed off the Arab neighborhood of Sur Bahar after witnesses said the assailant fled toward that area.

After the attack, Jewish residents of Armon Hanatziv called for revenge, yelling, “We will get back at them!”

The stabbing is the third in Jerusalem in less than a week with apparent nationalistic motives.