NEWS ANALYSIS : World’s Attention Shifts to Jerusalem; Linkage to Kuwait Irks Israeli Officials : Mideast: Shamir letter calls on Bush to put the ‘Temple Mount incident behind us.’

According to the script, the world’s eyes are supposed to be focused on Kuwait and who owns it. But in a blink, the focus has been diverted to the knotty and explosive question of who owns Jerusalem, or at least parts of it.

Undoubtedly, in these cooling autumn days, attention will soon return to Kuwait and the Persian Gulf region, where armies anchored by a 200,000-member U.S. force are massed in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August. The question of Jerusalem is probably a longer-term matter; it has been around for more than 20 years.

To the horror of Israeli officials, a link has been formed between the two issues, despite vast differences in circumstance. Both involve territories occupied against the will of the indigenous population, and both are the objects of U.N. efforts to intervene.

Last week, Secretary of State James A. Baker III strengthened the parallel by suggesting that if Israel did not accept a U.N. mission authorized to investigate the Oct. 8 slaying of 21 Palestinians on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, it would run the risk of being seen in the same light as Iraq--which has ignored a series of U.N. resolutions calling for it to withdraw from Kuwait.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has tried to resist pressure from Washington and elsewhere on the issue of Jerusalem, the Arab districts of which were annexed by Israel after the 1967 Mideast War.

On Monday, according to a spokesman for Shamir, he sent a letter to President Bush asking him to “put the Temple Mount incident behind us.” But according to Israel Radio, he also reiterated his rejection of the U.N. mission, on grounds that receiving such a group would raise questions about Israel’s hold on Jerusalem.

“We shouldn’t lose our nerve or get emotional,” Avi Pazner, the prime minister’s spokesman, said. “The real problem is in the gulf and not here.”

Pazner hinted that Israel is considering one of the face-saving formulas that have circulated here: giving the United Nations Israel’s report on the Temple Mount incident, in which Israeli police shot to death 21 Palestinians and injured 150 after Palestinian crowds stoned Jewish worshipers.

Whether that formula might satisfy Washington and other capitals is open to question. The Bush Administration is concerned that its alliance with several Arab states against Iraq in the Kuwaiti matter will be endangered by Israel’s unwillingness to give ground.

“Right now, the last thing the United States wants to do is dwell endlessly on the Temple Mount affair,” said William Quandt, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington. “The whole point of the U.N. exercise was to get it behind us.”

But Israel has rejected the U.N. mission and kept the issue alive--and in the process has brought into play international attitudes toward Jerusalem that had been virtually dormant.

“What bothers the Israelis is that no one but they considers this an internal affair,” Quandt said. “It is, after all, fair game for the U.N.”

The United States, like most other members of the United Nations, does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. Officially, the city’s Arab districts are viewed as occupied, just as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are considered occupied. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, like East Jerusalem, were seized in the 1967 war.

In its resolution condemning Israel for the Temple Mount incident, the U.N. Security Council referred to Israel as the “occupying power,” with responsibility for protecting the population under its authority.

Successive administrations in Washington have maintained this position but have tolerated Israel’s expansion of Jewish neighborhoods. About 140,000 Israelis live in the eastern part of Jerusalem, nearly the same as the number of Palestinians. The population of the entire city is roughly 500,000.

It is rare to hear anyone in Israel say that he or she favors giving up a part of Jerusalem. Israelis point out that their takeover of the city followed an invasion that Israel repelled in self-defense. And they contend that, in keeping with Zionist ideology, as well as religious beliefs, Israel is recovering lost territory, not conquering that of someone else.

Last spring, President Bush called on Israel to stop building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank. Washington also pressed for promises that newly arrived Soviet immigrants would not be settled in any of the occupied land, and it withheld approval of guarantees for loans for immigrant housing.

Israel’s response disclosed the sensitivity with which the subject is regarded here. Foreign Minister David Levy delivered a letter to Baker pledging that Israel would not build housing for Soviet Jews beyond the so-called Green Line.

For Washington, the Green Line is the pre-1967 border with Jordan, which bisected Jerusalem. For Israel, the Green Line is the term for the border between Israel, including annexed portions of Jerusalem, and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Since Baker referred to the internationally recognized definition of the Green Line, Israelis questioned whether the Shamir government was giving in on a question of sovereignty. Newspapers and politicians called for clarification. The Jerusalem Post quoted an unidentified Levy aide as saying Levy had made a mistake. The Shamir government pointedly announced plans to build new neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

Even if the issue recedes now, analysts are already looking ahead to how it might resurface once the gulf crisis is resolved. If Iraq is expelled from Kuwait, will the United States feel compelled to impose a settlement on Israel and rework the concept of sovereignty in Jerusalem? Will U.S. allies demand a restoration of Arab sovereignty in half the city?

During the Bush Administration’s unsuccessful two-year effort to organize talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the status of Jerusalem was an unyielding obstacle. Israel refused to deal with any Palestinian leader with a Jerusalem address.

If, in the wake of the gulf conflict, the idea of regional talks involving Israel and Arab states replaces the idea of Israeli-Palestinian talks, this procedural roadblock might be skirted.

“Of course, in reality, Jerusalem can never be avoided,” the analyst Quandt said. “But maybe things can get under way without it being the central issue.”