Gun Sales Brisk as Fear Stalks Jerusalem : Israel crisis: Protection and revenge are much on the minds of both Palestinians and Jews.

The clientele at the Krav gun shop and shooting range in Jerusalem has grown more numerous and more demanding, a measure of the fear and tension that have gripped the city over the last three weeks.

Israeli men came in Wednesday to trade their small-caliber weapons for something heavier. Women came to take up pistols for the first time in their lives. Young workers considered renewing a daily familiarity with guns they thought they had left behind with their army service.

For Palestinians, too, protection is much on their minds, although they are prohibited by law from buying guns. So residents in Arab neighborhoods and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are shuttering windows and staying indoors for fear of reprisal attacks.

Revenge is also much on the minds of Israeli and Palestinian alike: stabbings, beatings, roving bands of vigilante groups, threatening declarations from underground groups, police patrols--all are on the rise. Ever since police killed 21 Palestinian rioters on the Temple Mount earlier this month, Jerusalem has been splitting at the seams.

“No one knows how long this will go on,” Shalom Uziel, manager of the Krav shop, said. “But people feel they must protect themselves.”

Israel’s leaders are forecasting that the fever will pass--some say sooner, some later. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir estimates that Jerusalem will return to a normal but still tense state of affairs in a few days’ time, while Defense Minister Moshe Arens expects it to take a few months.

There is no budging from an unwillingness to open peace talks with Palestinians, since in the government view, Palestinian violence is innate and hysterical.

“What prevails among them,” Arens said, “are the fanatic and brutal drives, the lack of respect for human lives, which is typical not only for some of the Palestinian population in the territories but also for some of the Arab countries.”

Palestinian analysts also believe the violence will subside. There is no tactical advantage, they say, to the risks of escalation of the Arab uprising, especially because the spotlight could shift suddenly to the Kuwait crisis.

Yet of the many explosions of civil violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the past three years, this has been the longest and bitterest.

On Wednesday, a 39-year-old Palestinian died of a beating at the hands of Israelis who caught him Tuesday in the act of stabbing two women soldiers near Haifa. The women were both hospitalized, one with a punctured lung.

Meanwhile, someone representing a shadowy group called Eye for an Eye telephoned television and radio stations to claim responsibility for the ambush shooting death of a Palestinian laborer. No arrests have been made; police and witnesses say Israeli civilians shot the Palestinian and three companions from a moving vehicle.

Defense Minister Arens called for an end to the revenge and vigilante attacks.

“I call on the entire Israeli population, Jew and Arab, to avoid these acts,” he said. “They break the law; they are against the interests of the state of Israel. There are security forces to deal with the people endangering our lives.”

On Wednesday, all was quiet. Palestinians were barred from entering Israel from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In Tel Aviv, Palestinians who customarily sleep in the city to avoid returning home from work each day were routed from their hiding places and sent to the territories.

Strains in Jerusalem were evident mainly in the extra patrols of paired police officers at many intersections and the number of police vans moving through the city.

Jerusalem has become a curious focus of two kinds of war fever--worry about attack from abroad and worry about civil conflict at home.

Residents are being issued gas masks in preparation for a possible attack from Iraq. What do the people consider the more worrisome, poison gas or revenge killings?

“I think gas attack is less likely,” said George Jamid, a plumber who was picking up masks for his wife and children at a school in East Jerusalem. “People here are afraid the Jews will come in and attack us. I used to work in Jewish neighborhoods. But not anymore. It is too dangerous.”

Across town in Jewish West Jerusalem, two secretaries entered the Krav gun shop to buy a pistol. Manager Uziel recommended a .22-caliber Beretta, which is lighter than the 9-millimeter pistol he recommends for men. But on learning that the women are from Jerusalem, he told them they need special permission from the Interior Ministry to buy a gun and that they probably could not get it.

Uziel estimates that more than 100 customers a day have come to his store to inquire about buying a gun since Sunday, when three Israelis were stabbed to death by a Palestinian laborer. Before Sunday, the average number was fewer than 20.

In general, Israeli private citizens are not permitted to own guns unless they live or work in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip. Soldiers on active duty are often seen carrying rifles through the city; pistols are usually seen on police officers and settlers.