Israel Rebuffs U.N.’s Arab Proposal : Mideast: Perez de Cuellar wants to convene an international conference on ways to protect Palestinians.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday rebuffed a proposal by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to convene an international conference on ways to protect Palestinians living under Israeli rule, saying such a conference would be unnecessary and would infringe on Israel’s control of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The statement was similar to Israel’s rejection of a recent resolution by the U.N. Security Council to investigate the handling of unrest last month at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. Twenty Palestinians were shot and killed by police after rioters rained down stones on nearby Jewish worshipers.

After Israel refused to cooperate with the U.N. investigation, Perez de Cuellar issued a report last week in which he called for a meeting of the signers of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides guidelines for protecting civilians in times of conflict. No date was set. A total of 164 nations, including Israel, signed the 1949 convention.

Calling Perez’s report “biased,” the Foreign Ministry statement said it “was unfortunate that the secretary general did not see fit to call for a cessation of violence on the part of Palestinians.”

A ministry spokesman added that the U.N. report is a “disgraceful exploitation of a tragic incident (meant) to call into question Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.”

After the Israeli Cabinet approved the rejection of the U.N. move, Health Minister Ehud Olmert, a confidant of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, responded harshly to the idea of an international conference.

“A conference of the Geneva Convention signatories is a conference of states who actively maintain murderous dictatorships,” he said. “The thought that we will be judged by the biggest murderers in the world seems like something we should not agree to.”

As the government met, turbulence swept the streets of the Gaza Strip for the second day in a row. More than 80 Palestinians were wounded in clashes with soldiers, Israel Radio reported. Hospitals and the U.N. refugee agency put the figure at more than 100.

On Saturday, one Palestinian was killed and dozens wounded when Palestinians took to the streets to throw stones at army patrols after word spread that an activist in the Palestinian uprising had died in jail. Prison authorities said he hung himself.

Since the Oct. 8 riot at Al Aqsa, Shamir’s government has taken pains to block any U.N. procedure that would suggest an outside authority has the right to intervene in either Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967, or the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel has held since then but has not formally incorporated.

The United States, in a rare instance of harsh criticism of Israel, supported a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned the police crackdown on the Al Aqsa rioters. The U.S. move has left Israel to fend off diplomatic pressure on its own.

In doing so, Israel has revealed in unusually clear terms its view of the status not only of Jerusalem but also the West Bank and Gaza.

Despite the rejection of the annexation of Arab districts by all but a handful of countries, no part of Jerusalem is subject to international intervention, the government maintains. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are outside the jurisdiction of the Geneva Convention because they were seized during a war of self-defense, an argument that indicates Israel does not think the territories are occupied at all.

In its initial response to Perez de Cuellar’s report, Israel’s mission to the United Nations issued a statement saying that the status of the land “is not clear under international law.”

The statement concluded that “Israel has the sole responsibility for the administration of these areas, including the duty to maintain law and order. This responsibility is not subject to review or intervention by other authorities.”

Israel applies the 1949 Geneva Convention strictly for humanitarian reasons, Minister Olmert said Sunday. The Geneva Convention rules hold occupying powers responsible for protecting lives, property, religious and other rights in the territory under control.