U.N. Exploits Arab Deaths, Shamir Charges

Responding with anger to a U.N. condemnation of Israel for the deaths of Palestinian rioters in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected any outside intervention as an attempt to punish his nation, Israel Radio reported Saturday.

Shamir’s statement appeared to set up a diplomatic confrontation over the U.N. Security Council’s decision to send a delegation to Jerusalem to probe last Monday’s Temple Mount riot and the subsequent police response. However, government officials said a decision on whether to receive the U.N. team will be made today at a regularly scheduled Cabinet meeting.

“Jerusalem is the pupil in the eye of the Jewish people, and it would be a crime to allow any external intervention,” the radio quoted Shamir as saying. “The United Nations wanted to exploit the regrettable affair on the Temple Mount to gore Israel.”

The government was indignant that the United Nations did not hold Palestinian stone throwers responsible for provoking the turmoil at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Without the stoning of Jewish worshipers at the adjacent Western Wall, there would have been no shooting, Israeli officials argued.

“There is no basis or justification for the resolution,” said Avi Pazner, a spokesman for Shamir. “Israel has acted in self-defense to protect the safety of Jewish prayers attacked by an Arab mass.”

Israeli police shot and killed 19 Palestinians on the Temple Mount and wounded 150, the Israeli government says. Palestinians put the death toll at 21. Stones hurled by Palestinians injured 22 Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall.

The Shamir government is wary of the U.N. team. Officials say the inquiry could undermine Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Israel annexed Arab districts of the city after defeating an invasion of Arab armies in the 1967 Middle East War. Neither the United Nations nor the United States, Israel’s strongest ally and chief foreign benefactor, recognize the annexation of the eastern half of the city.

“We are deliberately holding back on saying whether we will accept the investigation,” said a government official, speaking on condition that he not be identified. “Basically, the issue for us is Jerusalem.”

The Shamir government also claims that the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are, by historical right, part of Israel and are needed as a buffer against hostile neighbors. Israel has stopped short of annexing the occupied land.

Israeli officials expressed dismay that Washington had a hand in crafting the resolution. They viewed the U.S. vote to condemn Israel as a payoff to Arab allies who have sent armies to confront Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait. The Israelis said that by backing the resolution, the Americans gave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a propaganda victory.

“The resolution helps Saddam Hussein, who since the beginning (of the Persian Gulf conflict) has tried to divert attention from the crisis,” said Pazner, the prime minister’s spokesman.

In a bid to attract Arab support for his invasion of Kuwait, Hussein has linked any solution to the Persian Gulf crisis to simultaneous progress on ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The 15-member Security Council adopted the resolution unanimously Friday. It expressed alarm at the killings and welcomed a decision by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to send an investigative team.

The United States last took a leading role in condemning Israel in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon. Since then, Washington’s representatives have consistently vetoed as one-sided resolutions criticizing Israel. One exception occured in 1988, when the United States voted to condemn Israel’s deportation of Palestinian activists.

Independent observers viewed Washington’s vote in the Security Council not only as a reaction to the bloodshed on the Temple Mount but also as a response to a long period of friction in its relations with Israel. Shamir has evaded Bush Administration efforts to organize Israeli-Palestinian talks.

“Everyone knows that Washington is mad at Israel,” political commentator Aryeh Naor said.

Added Yaron Ezrahi, a political theorist at Hebrew University: “This is just another step in the constant erosion of American support in the past few years. It shows impatience with Shamir, who has torpedoed any and all peace initiatives.”

Both observers questioned whether now is the right moment for the United States to express its unhappiness. They noted that the Israeli public, sensitive to any attack on the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, is likely to close ranks in defense of the government.

“The mood is defiant,” Ezrahi said.

Palestinians are critical of the U.N. action because they believe it is weak.

“Condemnations cannot rub out the blood of the innocent people which was spilled in the yard of the mosque,” said Radwan abu Ayash, a Palestinian nationalist aligned with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abu Ayash called for U.N. troops to be sent in to protect Palestinians, a persistent PLO demand.

Before Friday’s U.N. vote, the PLO tried to persuade the Security Council to send its own investigative team, a maneuver widely seen here as an effort to install U.N. supervision in the occupied lands, including East Jerusalem. The panel to be sent by Perez de Cuellar has less clout than one sponsored by the Security Council.

Israel has promised its own investigation of last Monday’s violence, although from official statements, it appears that the main focus will be on the lack of police preparedness to confront the rioters.

In the meantime, accounts of the violence published in Israeli newspapers are slowly giving shape to the chaotic event.

The riot seemed to occur in three stages. First, a confrontation took place between police and Palestinians gathered to protest a reported effort by a group of Jewish fundamentalists to lay the cornerstone a new Jewish temple.

Accounts differ over how the clash began. Some reports say police attacked a group of chanting demonstrators, another that a tear-gas grenade went off by mistake and a third that police intervened to stop stone throwers.

Then, a wave of worshipers from the Al Aqsa mosque drove the police contingent out of the compound, freeing rioters to hurl rocks on Jews worshiping at the Western Wall below.

A police counterattack drove the mob back toward the gilt-topped Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third holiest shrine, but the shooting did not stop even after the crowd retreated. Several Palestinians were shot and killed near the Dome of the Rock, dozens of yards from the corner of the enclave overlooking the Western Wall.

Some reports place in question a government contention that the riot was planned ahead of time with the aim of harming Jewish worshipers.

Medical reports say that many of the dead and wounded were shot in the back, suggesting they were struck while running away.

Since the riot, sporadic unrest has erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip despite curfews imposed in numerous towns and villages. Soldiers have killed five Palestinians and wounded another 28 in violent outbreaks.

Defense Minster Moshe Arens acknowledged that his policy of trying to reduce confrontations is in danger of collapsing.

“Regarding the situation in the field, there is no doubt there is a step back. The question is whether it is a relatively small, temporary setback, a matter of a week, two weeks or a longer period,” Arens said on a Friday television broadcast.