Israelis Kill Another Top Guerrilla : Mideast: Militant Palestinian leader is slain while protests simmer over ambush killing of Hamas militia chief. Police say action will curb violence against PLO accord.

Israeli security forces, continuing their campaign against the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, shot dead another of the Palestinian guerrilla group’s senior commanders in Jerusalem on Friday while protests still simmered against the last ambush killing in the Gaza Strip.

Police said Khaled Mustafa Zer, a guerrilla commander based in the West Bank city of Hebron, was tracked to a hide-out in a suburb of East Jerusalem, where he fled the house in which he had taken refuge. He was shot as he ran through a nearby olive grove.

Zer, 25, from Itqu, a West Bank village near Bethlehem, was suspected in the killings of two Israeli soldiers and a Jewish settler in the Hebron area.

He was described by police as both a local militia commander and a rising regional leader of Hamas, as the Islamic Resistance Movement is known.

His death will be a major blow to Hamas on the West Bank, security forces said, and should help stem the violent protests among Palestinians against the accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization on Palestinian self-government.

On Wednesday, an Israeli undercover unit in Gaza City killed Imad Aqel, a top regional Hamas commander, in an ambush.

Israeli security forces have successfully targeted several other Hamas leaders in the last month in an effort to purge the Gaza Strip of the most militant opponents of the autonomy agreement before the PLO takes over there in January.

Sporadic protests, including a commercial strike, continued in Gaza City on Friday after the worst day of Palestinian clashes with Israeli forces since the agreement was signed Sept. 13.

Mosque preachers in Gaza and Jerusalem called at midday prayers Friday for reprisals as they denounced the peace pact with Israel.

Hamas threatened this week to kill Israeli soldiers in retaliation for Aqel’s death, and Israeli forces throughout the Gaza Strip and West Bank remained in a state of alert Friday in anticipation of new attacks.

The renewed violence brought a further warning Friday from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that Israel will not sign an agreement implementing autonomy without full assurances of its own security and that of the 125,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The date is not sacred, because it was set as a target,” Rabin said, touching off immediate speculation that Israel was either trying to back out of its promise to begin withdrawal on Dec. 13--or, more likely, to set tougher conditions.

“It is better to allot more time and to know that we have finished something over which there are no misunderstandings or different interpretations,” Rabin said.

But PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, visiting Stockholm, urged a quick Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho as the surest way to end the violence.

He said Israel must not let the violence delay the withdrawal.

“This is very dangerous and very serious,” Arafat said of the Gaza clashes. “This escalation has to be stopped. The only way to stop it is the quick implementation of the agreement. We have to respect what has been signed. It is up to both sides to implement what was agreed.”

Arafat confidently predicted that “everything will go smoothly” once the transition is under way. “This is my land; these are my people,” he said.

But he conceded that the PLO too expects opposition from Hamas.

“We definitely will have some troubles here and there,” he said.

Jewish settlers opposed to the agreement with the PLO again went on the rampage in Hebron on Friday, smashing the windows of Arab cars, overturning vegetable sellers’ stalls in the markets and breaking windows at random, according to Palestinian residents of the city.

When the group of between 20 and 30 Israelis approached the local hospital, apparently intent on attacking it, Palestinian youths responded by hurling stones.

Soldiers opened fire to protect the settlers, shattering windows in the building, hospital officials said. The army said it was checking the report.

Zer was killed in an olive grove Friday morning by paramilitary police and security agents who had chased him out of his hide-out in the Jerusalem suburb of Sur Bahir, witnesses and police said.

Zuhair Hamdan, whose house overlooks the olive grove, told reporters that he had seen an Israeli soldier or policeman carrying an Uzi submachine gun run up to an officer and shout, “I killed him!”

“You ass,” Hamdan quoted the officer as saying. “Why did you kill him?”

The other soldier replied: “He shot at me.”

But Hamdan and other witnesses said that the police found no weapons with Zer.

Residents threw stones at police who removed Zer’s body. His relatives buried bloodstained stones where his body had fallen.

Israeli military censors suppressed news of the incident for nine hours to allow the security police to pursue Zer’s colleagues.

Police meanwhile disclosed that another Hamas guerrilla was killed Nov. 8 after he had shot and killed an Israeli driver near Hebron.

That attack led to several days of anti-Arab violence by Jewish settlers from Hebron and other West Bank communities.

A Jewish settler in the West Bank was arraigned Friday on terrorism charges after customs agents at Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv said they found him with explosive devices and gun silencers purchased in the United States.

Rabbi Avraham Toledano, 35, is a leader in the ultra-Zionist Kach movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane with the aim of purging Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and incorporating the territories into Israel.