2 Killed, 18 Wounded in W. Bank Shootout

In an escalation of violence that threatened to scuttle a fragile cease-fire agreement, Israeli soldiers trying to rescue Jewish settlers waged a five-hour gun battle with Palestinian militiamen on a West Bank hillside Thursday, leaving two people dead and at least 18 wounded.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared the shootout near Nablus a “gross violation” of the truce announced Tuesday by President Clinton at an emergency Middle East summit in Egypt.

A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, in turn, accused Israel of attempting to sabotage international efforts to halt the worst violence here in years. “Israel is playing with fire,” spokesman Nabil abu Rudaineh said.

The two dead were a Palestinian and an Israeli civilian who bled to death awaiting rescue. Fifteen Palestinians and at least three Israelis were injured, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

At the peak of the battle, Israeli helicopter gunships, attempting to evacuate wounded Jews, raked the Palestinian positions with machine-gun fire. The Palestinians fired back with heavy machine guns, prompting shouts of triumph--captured on videotape and later broadcast continuously in Israel--from a crowd of onlookers. No helicopters were hit, the Israeli army said.

The shooting came on the eve of a critical deadline, set for midday today, for full observance of the truce worked out at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik. Under international pressure, Barak and Arafat agreed to try to end the 3-week-old uprising that has claimed 109 lives, most of them Palestinian or Arab Israeli, and left prospects for Middle East peace in ruins.

At day’s end, with the accusations flying, it was not clear if the gun battle near Nablus would render the agreement void. At a minimum, it seemed certain to complicate the efforts to return to the relative calm that prevailed here until Sept. 28.

And it dealt a further setback to any hopes that Israel and the Palestinians might soon return to peace talks. The 1993 Oslo peace process, which was based on the slow and steady building of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, appears mortally wounded.

“Assuming there is an end to the violence, it is not going to be so easy to pivot to resumption of the negotiations,” a Western diplomat said Thursday. “It’s very personal. A lot of effort was put into the personal relations of the negotiators over the years, and that trust has been broken in a clear and palpable way.”

Until midafternoon Thursday, the level of violence in recent days had been relatively low. Two Palestinian police officers died in what Palestinians described as a gas explosion near the Bethlehem headquarters of Arafat’s elite police guard, although Israelis expressed some suspicion about the blast’s origin. And there were intermittent clashes elsewhere.

But the real trouble began when about 40 Israeli settlers, including four babies and eight older children, arrived at the rocky hillside overlooking Joseph’s Tomb, a Jewish shrine inside Nablus that was ransacked Oct. 7 by Palestinians.

The settlers, some of whom were armed, had received permission to visit the site despite a recent prohibition on Israeli excursions to the West Bank, Israeli officials said. The group traveled on a bus with a military escort.

The decision to allow the Israelis to journey so close to Nablus in the current atmosphere was a “grave lapse” in judgment, Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, chief of the Central Command, said late Thursday.

“Such a tour should not have been allowed to take place,” Eitan said. “But let it be clear that the responsibility for this incident remains solely that of the Palestinian Authority.”

There are widely varying accounts of what happened next. Israelis said Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the group from Askar, a neighborhood on the eastern edge of Nablus. Palestinians said the Israelis fired first.

Hussam Khader, a Palestinian legislator who said he witnessed the beginning of the battle, told The Times that the settlers had attacked a Palestinian home at the bottom of the hill, torching it and terrorizing its residents.

Another account said the Israelis had opened fire on Palestinians harvesting olives.

Several helicopters fired on Palestinian militiamen seeking cover amid the boulders on Mt. Ebal, or the “Accursed Mountain.”

The Israeli general said Palestinian officials rebuffed attempts to arrange a truce so the wounded could be evacuated. Palestinian officials said they could not comment.

But Abu Rudaineh, Arafat’s spokesman, said Israel had violated its agreements with the Palestinians by allowing the settlers to enter areas under Palestinian control.

Today is likely to present a crucial test for the two sides, with the deadline looming at midday, a summit of Arab leaders on the horizon for the weekend and Friday prayers, a gathering time for Muslims that frequently has ended in clashes with Israeli troops.

In Geneva, meanwhile, the top U.N. human rights forum adopted a resolution condemning Israel for widespread human rights abuses and “indiscriminate use of force” in combating the uprising. The resolution was favored by 19 member nations and opposed by 16, including the U.S., with 17 members abstaining.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem and Associated Press in Geneva contributed to this report.