Slaying of Israeli Triggers Retaliation in Gaza : Mideast: Jewish settlers returning from funeral reportedly fire on Palestinians, killing 1, wounding 20.

Two Palestinian workers stabbed their Israeli employer to death Monday morning in the occupied Gaza Strip, and Jewish settlers, returning from the man’s funeral, reportedly shot 21 Gazans, killing one, in apparent retaliation.

The murder of Uri Magidish, 39, a vegetable farmer and father of four at an Israeli settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, had brought strong warnings from other settlers that, if they did not obtain more protection from the army, they would mount an “active defense” to ward off Palestinian attacks.

“Our account with the residents of Khan Yunis is not yet closed,” settlers at Gan Or told state-run Israel Radio, referring to the nearby Palestinian town and refugee camp from which the suspected killers had come. “Let there be no doubt--we will balance everything.”

After the murder of four Israelis--two in Tel Aviv, two in the Gaza Strip--in just a week, settler anger has surged; it was mourners coming from Magidish’s funeral Monday afternoon who reportedly opened fire as they came upon Palestinian workers returning from their jobs in Israel.

After closing the Gaza Strip for a week in response to the Tel Aviv slayings, Israeli military authorities on Monday had allowed 33,000 Palestinians from the region to cross into Israel to work.

As the workers were returning about 5 p.m., passing through the Erez checkpoint and lining up for taxis and buses to take them home, several cars of Israeli settlers opened fire on them, according to Palestinian witnesses, and 21 men were hit in the fusillade.

Naim Mahmoud Madhoun, 25, who was coming home from work in Tel Aviv, was fatally wounded, witnesses said.

The settlers, who had been among the thousands at Magidish’s funeral in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Gat, said they had been stoned by the Palestinians and had stopped to stone them in return.

The army, which had substantially reinforced its deployments at the Erez checkpoint Monday, and the border police, which had accompanied the mourners, apparently did not intervene in the clash at Erez.

None of the settlers, many of whom were armed, were sure who had opened fire, according to state-run Israel Radio, and some said that Madhoun was actually shot by “one of his friends,” although Palestinians are prohibited from carrying guns.

Another Palestinian was killed on the West Bank. Tahir Juma abu Ghalyun, 16, was fatally wounded near the town of Tulkarm, according to Israeli military officials. Soldiers said they opened fire on a group of Palestinians who had stoned their bus.

The settlers’ action at Erez was not a surprise, for the sharp increase in attacks upon Israelis, not only in the occupied territories but also in Israel proper, has made many far readier to retaliate.

Last week, the leading settlers organization called upon Israelis on the West Bank and in Gaza to arm themselves and to fire whenever attacked, including attacks by stone-throwing youths.

The following day, a Jerusalem truck driver said he opened fire, killing an elderly Palestinian outside a neighborhood mosque, after he was stoned by local youths.

“For a full year, we have lived under tremendous pressure,” a Gan Or resident said. “We knew this (Magidish’s murder) would happen, but not when and to whom.”

Magidish, a former schoolteacher who came to Gan Or five years ago, was killed shortly before 7 a.m. Monday when two Palestinians he had hired to harvest tomatoes in his greenhouses attacked him, according to Israeli police. They reportedly stabbed him seven times in the throat and chest.

Magidish’s assailants, taking his pistol, apparently fled to Khan Yunis through a hole in Gan Or’s security fence. Later in the day, leaflets were distributed at local mosques claiming responsibility for the murder of the “Zionist settler” on behalf of the “Fatah Hawks,” armed guerrillas linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mainstream group.

“I can’t understand the brutality of an Arab who from time to time acts like an animal,” said the Israeli commander in southern Gaza, “Colonel Y,” as army rules require him to be identified, as he visited Gan Or. “But I am sure we will catch them.”

The 3,000 Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip renewed their calls Monday upon the army to crack down upon Palestinian nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists alike among the region’s 750,000 Arab residents.

“All those wanted (by the security forces) should be killed, and all those who incite violence should be deported, immediately and permanently,” declared Zvi Hendel, the chairman of the Gaza Regional Council, demanding a full, two-week, house-to-house search of the Gaza Strip.

Gan Or residents blamed the fatal stabbing on talk within the government, much of it at Cabinet level, of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“The government has to be more assertive with the Arabs and not to say it is leaving here today, tomorrow or five years from now,” settler Yossi Tzarfaty said after Magidish’s slaying.

But he laughed off suggestions that some of Gan Or’s 47 families might leave. “God forbid,” he said.

But Ilanit Ukra, 23, said: “If they were to put a moving van in front of the house now, I would leave. You hear the same thing from a lot of people. There’s fear, a feeling of helplessness, anxiety.”

Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister, agreed that talk of an Israeli pullout must be halted.

“We cannot, and we need not, leave any part of Eretz Yisrael (the biblical land of Israel), and a Jewish government must not even consider leaving,” Shamir said.

BACKGROUND

Security problems in the Gaza Strip have meant that Jewish settlement there remains minimal despite years of support from previous hawkish Israeli governments that were led by the Likud Party. Both the Gaza Strip, captured from Egypt, and the West Bank, captured from Jordan, have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War. Unlike the West Bank, where government housing subsidies and other benefits have brought 129,000 Jewish settlers to live among 1 million Palestinians, there are fewer than 5,000 Jews living among Gaza’s 750,000 Arabs.