Protests Paralyze Large Parts of Jerusalem : Israel: Rubber bullets, tear gas used to disperse ultra-Orthodox Jews demanding halt to burial grounds excavation.

Large portions of Jerusalem were paralyzed for much of Sunday while thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested against the excavation of ancient burial grounds as the Israeli capital expands its road network.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear-gas grenades to disperse the throngs of black-coated, black-hatted men as they demonstrated at a dozen points around Mea Shearim, the city’s main ultra-Orthodox section, which they barricaded with burning tires and garbage bins.

As paramilitary border police moved into Mea Shearim itself, squads of yeshiva students pelted them with empty bottles, rocks and even cement blocks from the rooftops of the religious schools.

Passersby, including Arabs and non-Orthodox Jews, were assaulted; a car full of Palestinians was overturned, its occupants still inside, but police drove off the mob as they tried to set it on fire. A young boy was injured in the melee, according to a police spokesman, as were six policemen hit by flying rocks. Twelve people were arrested.

For the ultra-Orthodox, known in Hebrew as haredim, or “the fearful,” for their strict observance of Jewish law and their rejection of secular values, it was all part of a continuing and crucial struggle, a virtual kulturkampf, to shape the future of Israel.

“We do everything to respect the haredim, “ Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek said later of the ultra-Orthodox. “They were the first here, and they deserve respect. But they should not try to run things through force. . . .

“A few dozen people are reigning on the Arab streets, and a few dozen are ruling on the haredi streets,” Kollek added. “It is all quite dangerous.”

In other developments, a 25-year-old Israeli security policeman was found beaten and stabbed to death in a stairwell of an apartment building in the fashionable Rehavia section of central Jerusalem where he had gone to meet an Arab informant Sunday afternoon.

Police described Haim Nachmani’s murder as “an apparent terrorist attack” and said at least two men had been involved. State-run Israel Radio called his slaying “especially brutal,” saying he was stabbed and beaten with a hammer over all parts of his body.

Earlier Sunday, a 26-year-old Jewish carpenter was attacked and his throat slashed, apparently by a Palestinian co-worker, at a construction site south of Tel Aviv. Police said they were uncertain of the motive in the crime.

An 18-year-old Palestinian, Yasser Sofi, was shot dead in the occupied Gaza Strip as Israeli troops clashed with youths at the Rafah refugee camp there. A 60-year-old man, suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities, was killed by masked men at the camp, according to Arab journalists there.

While the focus of the ultra-Orthodox protests in Jerusalem was bones removed from two burial caves outside the walls of the Old City, the haredi demonstrations were the latest in a bold assertion of their political power in the face of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s secularist government.

The underlying motive, many Israeli political observers believe, is increased financial assistance to the ultra-Orthodox community, especially its schools.

In past governments, religious parties played a decisive role, these observers noted, and consequently received large amounts of money for their schools, synagogues and community groups. The allocations have been affected by budget cuts, and only one religious party is now in the government and benefiting from it.

For nearly three months, the ultra-Orthodox demonstrated against an overpass being built at French Hill in northern Jerusalem after Jewish graves from 2,000 years ago were discovered; after mobilizing more than 20,000 haredim there last week, they forced Rabin to halt construction while a compromise is worked out.

Kollek, angry over Rabin’s intervention, had denounced the haredim last week--and his official car was burned outside his house over the weekend. The tomb of Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was vandalized as well.

On Sunday, the haredim were protesting the removal by the Israel Antiquities Authority of bones from two 7th-Century burial caves in Jerusalem’s Mamilla neighborhood just outside the walls of the Old City, where a luxury apartment complex and shops are being built.

Although archeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority said the burial caves belonged to Christians, noting that the oil lamps in them all had crosses, the demonstrators insisted that the bones were those of Jews and thus needed reburial.

Efrat Orbach, the Antiquities Authority spokeswoman, said the caves contained 137 Byzantine coins, one gold and the rest bronze, oil lamps and about 100 human skeletons.

“All of the oil lamps are marked with a crucifix, which basically identifies the religion of the people buried there,” Orbach said. “According to historical sources, they were Christians killed by Persians in AD 614. There isn’t any doubt--it’s 100% sure.”

Under Jewish law, graves should not be disturbed if at all possible, and if they are, then the remains should be reburied.

The current disputes revolve around both the need to move through ancient burial grounds, which virtually surround Jerusalem, and the commitment that the government has given to rebury the bones, though not the artifacts found with them.