6 Israelis Wounded by Arab in Attack at High School : Mideast: Knife-wielder draws angry retaliation against Palestinians in escalation of communal violence.

A Palestinian, shouting “God is great!” and slashing wildly with a large kitchen knife, wounded five Israeli high school students and their principal here Monday, and angry Jewish groups retaliated by attacking Arab passersby in a further escalation of communal violence.

Nasser Chkierat, 25, released from prison four months ago after serving 18 months for firebombing cars, ran through the yard of the John F. Kennedy Technical School slashing students with a large kitchen knife just as classes were about to begin, according to witnesses.

The school’s unarmed security guard threw a chair at Chkierat. The principal, Zevulun Seri, tackled him and students began to beat him with a baseball bat and their fists, the witnesses said. Chkierat’s skull was fractured and several bones were broken before police arrived and pulled him from the crowd.

About 200 students, joined by other Israelis, then turned the main roads near the school on Jerusalem’s south side into a virtual combat zone for much of the day, assaulting passing Palestinians and stoning cars going to Bethlehem and other towns on the occupied West Bank.

“Death to the Arabs!” the rioters chanted. They spat upon members of the Israeli Parliament who had come to the school and tried to calm the situation. The protests grew and spread into central Jerusalem in the evening, paralyzing several major thoroughfares, as Parliament debated the decline in security.

Six Arabs were hurt in the rioting, according to police, and 21 Israelis were arrested.

“The police saved the terrorist from being lynched,” Limor Livnat, a Parliament member from the opposition Likud Party, said after visiting the school. “I admire the police’s nobility, but if they had put a bullet in the terrorist’s head, it would have had a much greater deterrent value and saved us several (future) acts of terrorism.”

Chkierat, who comes from a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, had become more radical during his time in prison, according to Palestinian sources, and had told friends over the weekend that the recent attacks upon Israelis were an effective way to disrupt Middle East peace negotiations and intensify pressure on Israel.

In the occupied Gaza Strip on Monday, Israeli troops shot and killed several Palestinians as fighting there continued unabated. The precise number of dead Monday was uncertain, however, because Israeli and Palestinian accounts diverged sharply.

A 10-year-old boy was killed in one street clash where the army opened fire on stone-throwing youths leaving a school, according to military spokesman, and a 12-year-old mentally retarded boy was shot to death as he approached an army checkpoint playing with a plastic toy gun.

According to Palestinian accounts, which were still being checked by the military, an army sniper killed a muezzin, a Muslim calling worshipers to prayer, as he stood on the top of his mosque’s minaret in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis.

At the Nusseirat refugee camp, a 23-year-old refugee was fatally wounded in a clash with troops and died later at a local hospital.

After inspecting Israeli deployments in Gaza, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin defended his government’s approach to both security and negotiations with Israel’s Arab neighbors, telling the Knesset (Parliament) that he remains convinced of the need to pursue the peace talks while countering the upsurge of terrorist attacks.

“I believe that we will get past this difficult time and that in 1993 we will see a significant change on both the political and security fronts,” Rabin said.

Although on the defensive throughout the lengthy debate as right-wing politicians demanded that the army and police be given a freer hand to deal with violence, Rabin’s Labor Party defeated, 51-40, a no-confidence motion.

Recalling Israel’s early years, Rabin said, “The Israeli public must return to what it once was--a fighting nation, a nation that meets its challenges, a nation that knows that in this struggle the winner is he who does not weary, does not succumb to despair.”

Rabin said the government will deploy up to 2,000 extra police, but he added, “We cannot put a policeman in every place where a stabber shows up.” He asked Israelis to join the Civil Guard, which has fallen to fewer than 50,000 volunteers from more than 150,000 in the 1970s.