Arabs Israel

Israeli troops cracked down on violent protests that swept the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sunday as Palestinians, enraged by the unprovoked shooting deaths of seven Arab workers at dawn, took to the streets to demonstrate and stone army patrols. During the course of the day, soldiers shot and killed at least six Palestinians, four of them in the Gaza Strip. Several more gunshot victims were reported to be in serious condition.

Israeli security forces Tuesday were reported preparing a wave of arrests and expulsions of alleged West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinian agitators, and at least two more Arabs died from Israeli gunfire as the civil unrest that has rocked the country entered its third week.

At a meeting of senior editors and staff members for one leading Israeli newspaper last weekend, a bitter argument was under way over coverage of army efforts to end the unrest that has rocked the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for nearly six weeks. "Wait a minute!" interjected one staffer as he glanced around the room at his colleagues. "Next year, it could be any of our sons out there facing (Palestinian) women and kids throwing stones." There was a momentary hush.

Itzik Harouv is an ordinary Israeli who has just moved into an ordinary Israeli apartment building--or so he thinks, until he reads the name on the door across the hall: "Muna and Bassam Midawa." In a panic, he rushes to tell his wife the news. "Our neighbors are Arabs !" Itzik's serene young wife is not at all distressed. "We live in a country with Arabs, right? We eat in the same restaurants and work in the same offices. And you even sell them life insurance," she adds.

Sheik Raed Salah, a hard-line leader of Israel's Islamic Movement, chooses his words with care when he speaks of recent evidence that Israeli Arabs are involved in attacks against Jews. Israel's long history of discrimination against its Arab citizens "is not a justification for violence," said Salah, the mayor of this scruffy Israeli Arab town--and the object of intensive new scrutiny by a government that says it has no choice but to act against extremists within Israel's own borders.

On a rain-lashed mountaintop near Israel's northern border, the people of this vanished Arab village cling to its sole surviving building--a small, square church--and stubbornly insist that the government right a half-century-old wrong. They retell the tale they have repeated endlessly over decades to anyone who will listen. "On Oct. 28, 1948, the Israeli army came into our village, and we welcomed them," recalled Aouni Sbeit, 65, a poet who was 17 when soldiers of the new Jewish state arrived.

Some Jewish political leaders believe that the shape of Israel's next government may be decided by its Arab population--a sort of Middle East variation of the tail wagging the dog. Top politicians from both the Labor and Likud parties--major contenders in what has been billed as the pivotal Israeli election of Nov. 1--have campaigned vigorously among Israel's 330,000 adult Arab citizens.

Three Arab gunmen demanding freedom for Palestinian prisoners took over a passenger bus near here Monday, killing one Israeli man in cold blood before a special police anti-terrorist unit stormed the vehicle and shot the hijackers to death. Two more Israelis, both women, were killed--apparently during the rescue attempt--and eight other women passengers were wounded. The incident marked the first Israeli deaths after nearly three months of unrest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared "war" on the latest U.S. Middle East peace plan Wednesday as Palestinian unrest on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip entered its fourth month with three more Arabs reported killed by army gunfire. Speaking at a meeting of the parliamentary faction of his rightist Likud Bloc five days after the American initiative was formally presented here by Secretary of State George P.

Some say the trouble began after some 6- and 7-year-olds taunted a column of teen-age Muslim nationalists parading through the winding Old City of Nablus. The Muslims boxed the ears of some of the toddlers and offended their big brothers, who belonged to a rival gang from the Palestine Liberation Organization. Others say the conflict stemmed from simple turf battles between the Muslims and the secular PLO youths. No matter.