Israel Seals Off West Bank, Gaza After New Violence : Mideast: 150,000 workers are among those barred from nation. One killed, 7 wounded in 3 incidents.

A day of intercommunal violence jolted Israel on Tuesday and prompted the government to prohibit Palestinians from entering the country from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, beginning today.

Three incidents of violence occurred in widely separate parts of the country. In Mivtahim in Israel’s far south, a Palestinian driving from work to his home in the Gaza Strip was shot and killed by Israeli civilians firing from a moving jeep, military officials said. Two passengers in the Palestinian’s car were wounded.

Near Haifa, a Palestinian laborer from Janin stabbed two hitchhiking female Israeli soldiers, then was severely beaten by Israeli civilians, according to radio reports. Police said the 39-year-old Arab, who had been beaten for 20 minutes, was taken to a police station for interrogation and then evacuated for medical care.

Doctors at Rambam Hospital in Haifa at first said the laborer was dead, then reported he was in critical condition after brain surgery. One of his stabbing victims suffered a punctured lung, and the other was slightly wounded.

In Ashkelon, south of Tel Aviv, a Palestinian frame maker attacked his Israeli employer and a passerby with an 11-pound hammer. He was caught by the police as he fled. The Israelis were hospitalized with fractured skulls, their condition said to be moderate.

In response to the attacks, Defense Minister Moshe Arens ordered Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza banned from entering Israel. The ban will continue for several days, he said.

Since Sunday, Palestinians have been barred from entering Jerusalem as the result of the fatal knifings of three pedestrians by a Palestinian laborer. The suspected killer, Omar Salah Abu Sirhan, from a village near Bethlehem, said he attacked the Israelis to avenge the deaths of 21 Palestinians killed by police officers during rioting Oct. 8 on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

It is rare for Israeli authorities to prevent Palestinians from coming into Israel proper, where more than 150,000 Palestinian workers perform mainly menial tasks. The wages paid to Palestinians, although substandard, form a mainstay of the economy for the 1.7 million Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel’s building industry is heavily dependent on Palestinian labor. Their absence will further slow already lagging construction of housing for immigrants.

Despite the loss for both sides, the growing rage among Israelis and Palestinians since the Temple Mount killings has created an explosive situation, first in Jerusalem and now throughout the country.

On Tuesday, leaflets issued by the underground leaders of the nearly three-year Arab uprising urged Palestinians to step up attacks on Israelis. One leaflet, distributed by the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas in its Arabic acronym, praised Abu Sirhan as a “hero” for slaying a soldier, the owner of a garden store and a police officer.

“This is only the beginning,” the Hamas leaflet warned.

In Tunis, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization called for the beginning of a “war of knives.”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir blamed the wave of violence on “unusual hysterical incitement.”

“It is for them (the Palestinians) to know that he who commits terrorist acts against us will be immediately punished,” Shamir said.

Israeli officials pledged to issue shoot-to-kill orders to police officers. Police Minister Ronni Milo said that “from now on, open-fire regulations will be clear, and police will not have to worry about shooting murderers.”

Before news broke of Tuesday’s knifings, beatings and shootings outside Jerusalem, Israeli newspapers were filled with accounts of the change in climate in Jerusalem, scene of the worst violence over the last three weeks.

“Jerusalem is like Belfast,” said Yediot Aharonot, the daily with the largest circulation. “A war is being fought in it, between people, between religions, between citizens.”

Political analyst Emanuel Rosen, writing in the centrist newspaper Maariv, warned: “The legend of a peaceful and united Jerusalem has been cracked; the crack must be stopped from becoming a mutual blood bath.”

Police listed revenge as the motive for the attacks by Palestinians on Israelis--in the Haifa case because soldiers killed a 14-year-old boy in Janin during a stone-throwing clash, in the Ashkelon case because a friend of the assailant had been killed by soldiers.

No suspects have been arrested in the killing of the Palestinian near Gaza. The victim was identified as Maher Shaher, 30. One of the passengers was reported in serious condition with a gunshot wound in the back.