Rabin Urges End of Revenge Attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank : Mideast: Plea comes as settlers riot to protest murder of an Israeli. Army, police will intervene, prime minister says.

As political violence increased Monday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, threatening the accord on Palestinian self-government there, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called upon Israeli settlers in both territories to refrain from acts of vengeance against Palestinian residents.

Rabin, concerned about the spiral of attacks and counterattacks between Israelis and Palestinians, warned after a day of angry Jewish protests over the murder of settler Ephraim Ayubi that the Israeli army and police will intervene to maintain security and order on both sides.

“I call on those living in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip,” Rabin told the Israeli Parliament during a no-confidence debate challenging his policies, “to take the same path we took during a hundred years of terrorism--we buried our dead, gritted our teeth and carried on.

“I call on those in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip to stop those demanding revenge and disturbing the peace and to prevent a descent into disorder that will harm us. The security forces, for their part, have instructions . . . to prevent terrorism, but also to uphold the law with regard to Jewish residents too.”

On Monday morning, thousands of Israeli settlers used burning tires, stone barricades and occasional gunfire to block all major roads and most minor ones in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was the second time in 10 days that such demonstrations by settlers prevented most Palestinian workers from leaving the territories for their jobs in Israel.

According to Arab hospitals, at least five Palestinians were wounded by gunfire during the two days of settler protests over Ayubi’s murder. A Palestinian gunman, believed to be a member of the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, was killed Monday when troops fired on him while raiding his hide-out near Hebron, a military spokesman said.

“I think there are very good reasons to carry out acts of revenge, given the times, the difficult situation, the murder of Jews going on,” said David Cohen, a resident of the West Bank community of Kfar Tapuah.

Two Palestinians passing the community were shot and wounded early Monday, apparently by a right-wing Jewish group.

“The way that people feel, I have no doubt that what happened (the highway shooting) will be repeated, and I hope it will be, because that is what will return security to Jews here,” Cohen said.

An army statement said troops removed several roadblocks and one soldier fired into the air to prevent settlers from stoning an Arab driver, but Israeli journalists covering the protests said that in most places the soldiers did nothing to halt the settlers.

As the protests escalated and threatened to undermine the agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization on self-government for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau said: “There is an impression that the brakes have given way somewhere. . . . We need superhuman strength to calm people’s spirits.”

Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini warned that the two regions are heading toward “total chaos” if the rioting continues. Condemning violence on both sides, Husseini said that the autonomy agreement will be in jeopardy if the attacks and counterattacks are not halted.

“What we see of the settlers’ actions and the Israeli army reaction gives us the right to say . . . that the army must withdraw and the settlements and settlers along with it,” Husseini added. “Otherwise we will be facing a new situation that is the closest thing to total chaos.”

In its very balance, the prime minister’s warning against escalating the violence appeared to reinforce the resolve of hard-line settlers not only to confront the Palestinians, whom they blame for the deaths of 11 Israeli civilians and soldiers in the past two months in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also to challenge the Rabin government itself.

“We have always said that this government is a treasonous government,” declared Noam Federman, a spokesman for Kach, an ultra-Zionist movement. “It is interested in Jews leaving (the occupied territories). It is interested--and I stress interested--in as many Jews as possible being hurt so that we will run away.”

Kach would welcome the escalation of violence, Federman said, even if it led to open warfare, for that would prevent implementation of the autonomy agreement.

“That is exactly what we want,” he said. “I am not willing to give up a single centimeter of my land.”

But Aharon Domb, a spokesman for the main settlers movement, Yesha, described Kach and the other advocates of a violent response to the Palestinian attacks as “relatively small, marginal groups.”

Domb warned, however, that in implementing the agreement with the PLO on Palestinian autonomy, “the government is bringing about a situation that will lead to the murder of people (on both sides).”

Health Minister Chaim Ramon, a leading dove in Rabin’s Cabinet, said in response that the government will not allow the cycle of violence to wreck the accord and prospects for a broader peace.

Benjamin Netanyahu, chairman of the main opposition Likud Party, told the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, that the PLO is “letting Hamas do its work,” ridiculing Rabin’s assertion that Hamas and other radical opponents of the agreement are responsible for the attacks on settlers and that the PLO is now for peace.

“Is this why we made this peace? For daily murders?” Netanyahu asked Rabin. “You know this agreement is not leading where you thought it would, (and) you know the public is wising up.”

But Rabin won, 57-46, a series of four no-confidence votes that the opposition brought in the Knesset.