MIDEAST : Israelis Upset Over VIP Visits to Palestinian Office in Jerusalem : Orient House is at center of battle over the city’s future.

When Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring showed up at Orient House in East Jerusalem this week, he was greeted by angry Israelis shouting “Shame on you!” and by journalists demanding to know what he was trying to prove.

Ignoring aides who urged him not to comment, the Irishman icily told reporters: “You can read into it whatever you like.”

The source of all this controversy wasn’t the fact that Spring met with Palestinians. That was fine with the Israeli government. What was objected to was that he did it at Orient House, the Jerusalem headquarters of Palestinian political and cultural activity.

The large, 19th-Century stone edifice, behind an iron gate on a quiet residential street, has become an inviting target in the battle, already joined, over the future of Jerusalem. The reason: It symbolizes Palestinian aspirations for control of at least part of the 5,000-year-old city that both they and Israelis claim as their capital.

Any talks on the future of Jerusalem won’t begin for at least a year. The ongoing peace process is focused these days on setting the stage for an Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank, to be followed by greater Palestinian autonomy and elections.

But in this tense city, controlled by Israel but inhabited by both Arab and Jew, the issue of control is never far from residents’ thoughts. In recent weeks, the government has moved to take Palestinian-held land in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing and right-wing Israelis have purposefully moved into homes on the Arab side of the so-called Green Line.

Irishman Spring was, in fact, just the latest in a parade of foreign officials who have defied the Israeli government by trekking to Orient House since Parliament in December specifically banned all official activities in Jerusalem by the new Palestinian Authority.

While the Palestinian Authority doesn’t, strictly speaking, function in East Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, a minister without portfolio in the authority, does. And he works from Orient House.

Foreign dignitaries’ insistence on visiting Orient House has tied the Israeli government in semantic knots.

Was Spring’s visit a “courtesy call” or a substantive meeting? If it was a courtesy call, as Spring assured Israelis, then it didn’t violate the law.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told Spring that it was “a mistake” to visit Orient House. But Rabin told angry members of his Cabinet that there is no law against a courtesy call.

Of course, the meeting was not a mere courtesy call. The hourlong discussion covered a wide range of issues, including the future of Jerusalem.

“What is our policy?” demanded Ora Namir, the Israeli minister of welfare. “Here we demolish a house in East Jerusalem; there we let the Palestinians operate the East Jerusalem municipality. One day we allow people to visit Orient House; the next day it is forbidden.”

Just a few weeks ago, in fact, the Swedish deputy prime minister, told she couldn’t visit Orient House, promptly canceled all meetings with Israeli officials. And in February, European foreign ministers ignored Israeli threats and went ahead with a visit.

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Outside the mansion on Monday, about 100 Israeli protesters shouted and blew whistles from behind police barricades during Spring’s visit.

“This Orient House is a big pain in our back,” complained one of the protesters, Shimon Levi, a 49-year-old Tel Aviv businessman. “By coming to Orient House, these diplomats are saying we [Israelis] are not sovereign in Jerusalem. We already are losing ground, step by step, and I’m afraid this is going to finish Jerusalem.”

Inside Orient House, the reaction was one of bemusement.

“It’s pretty clear where the power is in Jerusalem these days,” said a smiling Salah Zuheikeh, Husseini’s chief aide. “People always demonstrate in front of the seat of power.”