Violence Spreads Between Arabs and Jews in Israel

In the bloodiest day yet, clashes between security forces and Israel’s Arabs spread so widely Monday that both sides spoke fearfully of the violence spiraling into a communal war between the country’s Jewish majority and Arab minority.

In addition to battling Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on the fifth day of violent protests, Israeli police were fighting stone-throwing protesters in their own back yard--in Israeli towns from the Negev desert in the south to Nazareth in the north.

Alarmed by the violence, the Clinton administration searched for ways to salvage the Middle East peace process. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was in Paris, summoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to meet her there Wednesday, and they agreed.

In a statement, Albright said her objective was to “find a way to end the violence, restore calm and ensure that there is no repeat of such an escalation.”

But the toll of dead and wounded continued to climb. As of late Monday, about 50 people had been killed.

Demonstrations began after Ariel Sharon, leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, last week visited the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City that Muslims call Haram al Sharif, or noble sanctuary, and Jews call the Temple Mount.

At least five Israeli Arabs were shot and killed Monday in clashes with border police, and two others died of wounds sustained in riots the previous day. Eight Palestinians reportedly were killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs were wounded by Israeli troops firing live ammunition and rubber bullets, and Palestinians put the number of wounded at more than 1,000.

An Israeli Jewish civilian, a man who was heading into a West Bank town to get a tire repaired, and an Israeli army sergeant also were killed.

The army said that soldiers escorting a civilian oil truck near the West Bank village of Beit Sahur were fired on and that Sgt. Max Hazan was killed. Four other soldiers were injured, and gun battles continued in the area into the night.

In Gaza, the army evacuated Israeli visitors to Jewish settlements by helicopter. Palestinians scaled the walls of an abandoned water tower at a military outpost near the flash point of Netzarim, a tiny, isolated settlement south of Gaza City, tearing down an Israeli flag before the Israeli army attacked with helicopter gunships. Soldiers also fired antitank missiles into two Palestinian apartment buildings overlooking the Netzarim junction.

Nightly TV Footage Shocks Both Sides

The violence in the territories angers Israelis, who blame Arafat. But eruptions in the West Bank and Gaza long ago became a familiar feature of military occupation. It is the rage playing out in the streets of Israeli Arab villages and footage of the mass demonstrations airing on their nightly television news broadcasts that are shocking Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs alike.

Israeli Arabs--Palestinians who stayed when the Jewish state was declared in 1948 and their descendants--make up 20% of Israel’s population. Although they do not serve in the army and suffer various forms of discrimination, they are citizens with full rights to vote and hold political office. With 11 members in Israel’s parliament, they are expected to take their grievances to the political and legal arenas rather than the streets.

“We’re aware of the large frustration among the Arab citizens in the country,” Barak said at the start of a meeting with chiefs of Israel’s security apparatus. “I call upon them not to allow themselves to be dragged by extremist elements who want to destroy the delicate tissue between Jews and Arabs.”

But in Umm al Fahm, Israeli Arabs said their anger is deep and will not abate until the government makes changes in the way it treats both Palestinians in the territories and Israeli Arabs.

Sharon’s controversial visit and the heavy casualty toll among Palestinians in the resulting violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip triggered the violence inside Israel, Umm al Fahm demonstrators said.

But this outbreak, they insist, is different from the intifada, or uprising, that raged in the territories in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Palestinians were fighting Israeli occupation. That was political, several demonstrators said. This is personal.

“When Sharon went to the Temple Mount, he was looking for votes” by demonstrating that Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, the two mosques on the site, are under Israeli sovereignty, said one protester. He spoke on condition that he not be identified for fear of retaliation from the Israeli authorities. “But our holy sites are ours.”

Those interviewed differed on what it would take to stop the rioting. Some thought that a withdrawal by the police would ease tensions. Others said that only Sharon’s arrest would appease them. Still others said demonstrations would continue until the government addresses some of the grievances of its Arab citizens.

‘Coexistence Very Much Damaged’

“In the short term, this coexistence between Arabs and Jews was very much damaged,” said Hashem Mahameed, a member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, from Umm al Fahm. “It will be repaired only when we see a new policy by the government of Israel, only when the police treat us as citizens of the state. Then we can talk.

“There is a new generation,” Mahameed said. “It is a generation that never knew failure, that never knew defeat. This generation looks straight forward, into the eyes of the majority, into the eyes of the leaders of Israel.”

As he spoke, cars honking wildly raced past his office, carrying demonstrators who had been shot in clashes with police at the entrance to the city. They careened up the town’s main commercial road, where demonstrators Sunday trashed a post office, torched postal trucks and destroyed a bank. For the second consecutive day, shops and businesses were closed in observance of a strike called for Arab towns and villages.

“The situation is very, very hot,” Mahameed said. “In all areas of the country, Arabs are rising up. It started with Al Aqsa, but it is an accumulation of reasons, a feeling of alienation, a feeling that the state of Israel put us, a long time ago, outside of the fence.”

Demonstrations raged even in Akko and Haifa, mixed Arab-Jewish cities where unrest is rare. Hundreds of rioters attacked a military court in Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish town just south of Tel Aviv, and demonstrators torched three Israeli branch banks in the Arab village of Kakaa al Gharbiyeh. In another village, an Israeli bus was torched and its driver pulled out and chased away.

“This is real war,” said Nawf Masalha, another Arab member of the Knesset.

Umm al Fahm opens onto the Wadi Ara Road, a main east-west artery in the Galilee that rioters have closed for two days by blocking the intersection with burning tires, torching passing cars and hurling rocks into the roadway. On Sunday, demonstrators took over the intersection and torched a gas station there. The station still smoldered Monday, and the burned-out shells of cars were strewn along the roadside, where lampposts had been pulled down by rioters.

On Monday, police clashed with demonstrators in the morning and early afternoon but then pulled back. They let demonstrators take over the road before a funeral for one of the town’s citizens who was shot and killed Sunday in clashes with border police. Other roads across the Galilee, in the Negev and elsewhere were blocked by demonstrators.

Clinton Sees a Silver Lining

In Washington, President Clinton told reporters that the riots could serve a useful purpose, although it is difficult to see that now.

“They can’t do anything on the peace process until people stop dying and the violence stops,” Clinton said. “But when the smoke clears here, it might actually be a spur to both sides, as a sober reminder to what the alternative to peace could be.

“I think it will be better tomorrow,” he added wistfully. “I hope it will.”

Administration officials sought to avoid placing blame for the riots, hoping to preserve Washington’s status as an honest broker in case peace talks resume before Clinton leaves office in January.

“I am not keeping score or trying to apportion blame,” State Department spokesman Phillip T. Reeker said. “Both sides need to do everything they can to restore calm, to avoid actions and words that can further inflame the situation.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.