Middle East State Of Siege

By Michael S. Serrill

Through the week, tension mounted in Bethlehem. The colored lights strung near Manger Square were brazenly destroyed. After receiving several threatening phone calls, Mayor Elias Freij, a Palestinian Christian, canceled his annual cocktail party for Israeli and Arab notables. Angry slogans appeared on walls. One read, JESUS CHRIST, HOW CAN WE BE EXPECTED TO CELEBRATE YOUR BIRTHDAY WHEN THE SOUL OF OUR HOMELAND IS RINSED WITH THE BLOOD OF OUR MARTYRS? Nervous soldiers in riot gear stood guard as tourists filed into the Church of the Nativity, built in the 6th century on the spot where Christ is believed to have been born. Troops with assault rifles and tear-gas launchers patrolled the market area, while soldiers ringed the perimeter of the picturesque hilltop village. On Christmas Eve, the heavy military presence combined with a cold rain to keep Bethlehem unusually quiet. Those pilgrims who did venture into the town were frisked before boarding their buses.

Christmas is always an anxious time in Bethlehem, a tempting target for terrorists who might want to send the world a violent Yuletide message from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But never in recent memory has the town, home to 30,000 Arabs, been more of an armed camp than this year.

Nerves tightened throughout Israel and the occupied territories last week as government soldiers continued to battle crowds of enraged Palestinian protesters. The confrontation took an ominous turn when the 740,000 Arabs who are citizens of Israel joined their brethren in the occupied territories in a general strike. The United Nations Security Council registered its indignation by voting 14 to 0 to "strongly deplore" the Israeli tactics. The U.S., Israel's most loyal defender, abstained rather than veto the resolution, marking one of the few times the U.S. has failed to back Israel in the Security Council. What particularly upset the Reagan Administration was Israel's use of live ammunition in confronting protesters. "Order must be maintained without the use of lethal force," declared State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley. "Techniques are available to accomplish this, and we urge they be employed."

But the criticism only deepened the resolve of Israel's hard-line Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to crack down on the rioters. Four thousand soldiers swept through towns and refugee camps, arresting as many as 1,000 Palestinians and carting them off to hastily erected detention centers. Then, in an angry speech in the Knesset, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced that Israeli soldiers would continue to shoot at the "leaders of disorder, throwers of fire bombs." Rabin added that his men would aim to injure, not kill, but he left little doubt that the government would not tolerate the loss of Israeli life. "As Defense Minister, I have responsibility for the lives and safety of the soldiers and border police," he said. "It is my duty to give them the means to protect themselves . . . to hurt those out to hurt them."

"Our situation," Shamir argued, "is like the picture of the giant Gulliver entering into a confrontation with dozens of dwarfs when one hand and two legs are tied, and there are declarations all the time that Gulliver is the bully." Shamir's metaphor encapsulated the siege mentality that has overtaken the government since the Palestinian riots began in early December. But to the outside world, it was a distorted portrait of how the battlefield actually looked. As television footage and photographs have made clear, Gulliver has the gun. Last week six more Palestinians were killed, raising the toll to at least 23 dead and hundreds wounded.

The first dozen days of rioting were confined to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Two weeks ago the unrest spilled into East Jerusalem, and last week it spread through several Arab villages and towns in Israel. Some of the worst violence came in the West Bank town of Jenin. After demonstrators hurled as many as 20 fire bombs at border police, the Israelis opened fire, killing two Arabs and wounding seven.

But the event that sent a shudder through the worldwide Jewish community came when the Israeli Arabs joined in a one-day general strike. Arab towns throughout Israel shut down their stores and schools. Some 170,000 Israeli Arabs failed to report to work, as did 80,000 Palestinians from the territories. The strike crippled part of the Israeli economy, which has become heavily dependent on Arab labor, especially for such blue-collar jobs as construction, street cleaning and garbage pickup.

In Nazareth, 4,000 youngsters ran through the streets, hurling debris at security forces. In Umm al Fahm, an Israeli Arab town in Galilee, 3,000 demonstrators were dispersed with tear gas when they blocked a highway near the town. Police and soldiers took care not to use lethal force against the Israeli Arabs, and none were killed.

Throughout Israel's stormy 40-year history, its minority Arab community has for the most part lived peaceably within its borders. All have rights as Israeli citizens, but they are not permitted to join the armed forces. Last week's turmoil thus raised a frightening specter: subversion by a united front of Arabs inside and outside Israel. The uprising, said the newspaper Ha'aretz, is "writing on our wall even more serious than the bloody riots of the past two weeks in the territories."

Throughout the week Israeli officials attempted to find ways to dampen tempers. In the West Bank, they closed Hebron University, a hot spot of Islamic fundamentalist activity, and several other colleges. A two-day shutdown of nearly 900 Arab schools in the occupied territories was extended through this week. The Jerusalem daily newspaper Al Quds, which circulates widely in Gaza and the West Bank, was banned there for one month after it published a picture of an Israeli soldier carrying a tear-gas launcher and fleeing from a crowd of demonstrators in Gaza. Two refugee camps, Jabalia (pop. 40,000) in Gaza and Dheisheh (pop. 8,000) near Bethlehem, were sealed.

At the same time, army commanders began to redeploy their troops. Instead of four- and six-man patrols at the refugee camps, groups of 15 soldiers were put into action. Helicopters and light aircraft were used to detect potential troublemakers. The tactics reflected the military view that an army decision two weeks ago to stop breaking up all demonstrations in Gazan camps had only encouraged the rioters. "We cannot let the Arabs go wild within the camps without interfering, because that has already been interpreted by them as our yielding control," said an Israeli general stationed in the West Bank. "Our main goal is to regain control."

Israel's measures drew harsh denunciations from its Arab neighbors. Jordan's King Hussein, on a state visit to Moscow, declared that the riots represent a "natural and real response of the Palestinian people," while Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah professed pride in the "struggle of the brotherly Palestinian people." There were calls for new terrorist attacks from Israel's neighbors. On Friday evening three Arab raiders, members of Abu Abas' Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, heeded that call and crossed into Israel from the upper Jordan Valley. They were apprehended after a brief fire fight.

To a degree, the rhetorical outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinians is hypocritical; for nearly four decades, the Arab states have done next to nothing to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem. At the Arab summit in Amman last month, the leaders paid little attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict and virtually ignored the presence of Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Last week Arafat, ever the opportunist, gathered P.L.O. leaders for a meeting at their headquarters in Tunis to discuss the possibility of declaring a Palestinian government-in-exile.

Israel's crackdown poses a special problem for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose country signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. The Palestinian riots tapped a deep vein of anti-Israeli sentiment within Egypt that a decade of peace has failed to dry up. Though Mubarak denounced Israel's "methods of repression and persecution," he resisted pressure from many of his countrymen and other Arab leaders to take stronger steps, including withdrawing his ambassador from Tel Aviv and breaking trade and cultural agreements.

Mubarak is in a tight spot. He does not wish to anger Washington, which gives Cairo $2.1 billion in economic and military aid a year and which he plans to visit next month. But neither does he want to jeopardize his rapprochement with the Arab world, which ostracized Egypt after it made a separate peace with Israel. Mubarak's quiet diplomacy paid off at the Amman summit, when a resolution was passed that allowed Arab countries to restore diplomatic ties with Egypt; within a week nine countries did so. "Egyptians simply cannot stand aside and watch the violence against Palestinians without objecting," said a Western diplomat in Cairo. "I do not like to contemplate the effects of erosion in the Egyptian-Israeli relationship."

Israeli leaders were most disturbed by the outcry from Washington. Presidential Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater accused the Israelis of "harsh security measures and excessive use of live ammunition," while the State Department issued daily calls for moderation. "We've had to change our language because we're really afraid everything will get completely out of a control," said a State Department official. "We're not sure how much influence we have, but we know we can't stay on the sidelines."

% Once the fighting stops, Departmental Spokeswoman Oakley said, the U.S. is eager to do whatever it can to get the long-stalemated peace process started again. In fact, there seems little chance of a direct U.S. role in the near future. Even as Oakley spoke, Secretary of State George Shultz was on vacation, and the White House was focused on other problems, chiefly the budget and winning new aid for the Nicaraguan contras. The coming year is also likely to see little initiative from the Reagan Administration, which last proposed a peace plan in 1982, only to see its efforts thwarted. Said Geoffrey Kemp, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "In an election season, it's unrealistic to think the Administration or Congress will do anything more than wring its hands. It would require more political bravery than people are willing to show at this point."

Many members of the U.S. Jewish community expressed concern about Jerusalem's handling of the crisis. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in New York City, said the protests, and particularly those by Israeli Arabs, "should shock Israel's government into realizing that it cannot sit idly by without engaging in some form of negotiation." But Schindler also said Israel should not be singled out for blame.

Negotiations leading to territorial concessions seem the furthest thing from the mind of Israel's leadership. "There is no force in the world, neither rioters, terrorists nor international pressure, which will prevent settlement by the people of Israel in all parts of the land of Israel," said Shamir last week. "The issue is not the borders of Israel but our very right to the land of Israel, our very presence and government over it." As long as Shamir is in charge, Israel will not easily be persuaded to loosen its grip on the occupied territories. But events of the past few weeks make it equally apparent that if Israel is to maintain its hegemony, it will have to be out of the barrel of a gun.

With reporting by Robert Slater/Jerusalem and Nancy Traver/Washington