Israel Tightens Controls on West Bank and Gaza Strip : Occupied areas: A rash of fatal stabbings has led to further expulsions of Palestinians, liberalized police firing rules.

A rash of fatal stabbings of Israelis by Palestinians has accelerated a trend toward tighter controls over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the further expulsion of Palestinians and liberalized firing rules for police, who have been told to shoot to kill armed Arabs they might see.

Travel restrictions, including an elaborate system of passes, are meant to reduce the chances of violent attacks inside Israel by itinerant workers and visitors from the occupied lands. Altogether, the new measures mark a setback to the government’s goal of normalizing life in the West Bank and Gaza after more than three years of upheaval. The current atmosphere hardly seems conducive to confidence-building measures promoted by U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III to pave the way to peace.

Warnings that Palestinians hemmed into the West Bank and Gaza by the new restrictions will turn increasingly violent appeared to be confirmed with a sudden series of armed attacks in the West Bank this week. On Tuesday, a pair of gunmen shot up the car of an Israeli settler as he motored to his West Bank home. The victim died from wounds to the head and chest. The next day, another car was ambushed, but none of the passengers was injured. On Thursday, a Palestinian youth hurled a pipe bomb at the police station in Bethlehem, wounding a soldier.

In Jerusalem, a 76-year-old Israeli was stabbed in the back Thursday as he walked to the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. The victim is in fair condition, Israel radio reported.

The deaths of Palestinians at the hands of occupation soldiers also continued. A 12-year-old boy was shot to death in the Gaza Strip on Thursday during a day of unrest that followed the fatal shooting by troops of a resident of the Rafah refugee camp.

Palestinian observers who once considered knife and armed attacks on Israelis to be a passing expression of bitterness over their flagging prospects for independence have now begun to view the actions as a permanent feature of the Arab uprising against Israeli rule.

“It was thought to be a fever,” said Mahdi Abdel-Hadi, who heads a Palestinian think tank in Jerusalem, “but it is a fever that is not passing.”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Cabinet is considering further curbs on travel by Palestinians from the territories into Israel. The government’s rhetoric has become harsher in recent days, and top officials have openly called for a shoot-to-kill policy for police inside Israel and vigilantism among civilians as a means of dealing with Palestinian violence.

“When a policeman or security man sees an armed terrorist brandishing a knife and intending to harm people, he should shoot to kill,” Police Minister Ronni Milo told a meeting of senior officers. “If anyone in the past had doubts about shooting to kill, today these doubts should be left behind.”

His words marked a sharp change in shooting orders for police; previously, they were instructed to shoot to maim only. In the West Bank and Gaza, soldiers have long been permitted to fire on stone-throwers, and settlers have been armed for self-defense units.

Milo has proposed keeping young, unmarried Palestinians out of Israel on the grounds that they are most likely to carry out attacks on Israelis. Milo’s police inspector general, Yaacov Turner, invited civilians to protect themselves. “Anyone who feels his life threatened can and must shoot in self-defense,” he said.

Defense Minister Moshe Arens opposed Milo’s plan on the grounds that it would create a de facto separation of Israel and the occupied lands, which the Shamir government is committed to keeping.

Arens favors expulsions of Palestinian activists to neighboring countries. Last weekend, Israel ordered four Palestinians expelled; none was directly involved in stabbings, but all were accused of incitement and of links with the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization.

The Bush Administration was critical of the expulsions, and the U.N. Security Council issued a statement Wednesday deploring the moves, saying they violated the Geneva Conventions. The Israeli government dismissed the criticism from both quarters.

Israel has ordered 69 deportations since the beginning of the intifada, or Arab revolt. Arens had been a prime proponent of a policy to quiet the West Bank and Gaza by focusing on the protection of settlers on main highways, reducing army patrols in small towns and villages and urging Palestinians to give up their revolt and resume workaday life.

During a recent visit to Israel, Secretary of State Baker urged Shamir to formally end the policy of deportations in order to lay the groundwork toward eventual Middle East peace talks. But the government appeared to be stiffening against such pressure. “We are dealing with a population of which a considerable portion ascribes no importance whatsoever to human values. They are brutal people, fanatics; in a word, murderers,” Arens told reporters the other day.

While delivering a eulogy at the funeral of the ambushed settler, Energy Minister Yuval Neeman said that in protecting itself, Israel’s hands are tied by the U.S. government, “which is constantly asking Israel to make concessions.”

Since the Persian Gulf War began in mid-January, six Israelis have been fatally stabbed by Palestinians inside Israel. Four of the victims were women. There were two other stabbing incidents last week; a pair of soldiers and a waiting passenger at a bus stop were moderately injured.

Even before the latest spasm of violence, the government moved to curb free travel in the West Bank and Gaza as well as passage into Israel on the grounds that Palestinians, in their enthusiasm for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, would demonstrate.

Many of the strictures have stayed in place. Curfews are frequent, and several schools have been closed due to clashes between soldiers and rock-throwing youths. Most notably, travel is proscribed by a series of passes: Special entry permits are required for workers to enter Israel. Passes are also required between some West Bank towns. West Bank travel that requires a transit through Jerusalem requires a different kind of pass. So does passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In all, Israel has reduced the number of laborers permitted to enter Israel to 50,000, less than half the customary number.

In Jalazoun, a crowded refugee camp of 6,000 residents near Ramallah, relief workers say about 400 workers used to labor in Israel, mostly at menial tasks. The number has dropped to about 40 due to the new travel restrictions.

Palestinians who have been in jail carry green identification folders which forbid travel into Israel and through army checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. Periods of good behavior can result in trading in the green folder for an orange one, but that does not necessarily mean that a pass will be granted for travel into Israel. The passes must be obtained by employers at military offices in the occupied territory.

Hamed, a construction worker in Jalazoun, has been denied a pass and believes that it is because three of his brothers have been jailed. “When I applied two days ago, they told me they didn’t want to see my face,” Hamed said. He, his wife and two children are living off the income of his father-in-law, who works for a U.N. relief group.

Israeli domestic intelligence officials have warned that growing unemployment among Palestinians will feed violence, newspapers reported Wednesday. “If all of them are banned from working within (Israel), they might turn toward terroristic activities,” an official told the Jerusalem Post.

Knifings increased last summer following the shootings of seven Palestinian laborers by an Israeli gunman in Rishon Le Zion, near Tel Aviv. In turn, revenge attacks by Israelis became common. The unrest died down until October, when 20 Palestinians were shot by police at Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.

After the Gulf War ended in the humbling of Iraq, the wave of stabbings began anew. In cases where identities are known, the assailants fit a profile of being under 30 and single. In several cases, they have been affiliated with Muslim fundamentalist groups.