Truce wobbles after hillside shootout

Israeli police reinforcements were sent to the Old City of Jerusalem, where riots started Sept. 28 and spread quickly to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More than 100 people, most of them Palestinians, have died in the clashes. Palestinians fired at a group of settlers who were hiking on a mountain overlooking Nablus. The settlers said they wanted to look from afar at Joseph's Tomb, a Jewish holy site abandoned by Israeli forces during the rioting and then ransacked by Palestinians. The Palestinians said the settlers started the battle by opening fire at unarmed olive pickers. The Israelis denied that and charged that the Palestinian gunfire at them was unprovoked. The Palestinian fire pinned the hikers down for five hours, though Israeli soldiers and attack helicopters returned the fire. Rabbi Binyamin Erling, 64, bled to death from his wounds. Three Israelis and 15 Palestinians were wounded in the gunfire. Clinton called Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat late Thursday and urged them to restore calm and implement the Sharm el-Sheik understandings, according to the White House. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called the Palestinian gunfire at the settlers a "flagrant violation" of the understandings reached at Sharm el-Sheik. After the summit, Barak gave the Palestinians 48 hours to stop the riots. With the period set to expire at midday Friday and frequent exchanges of gunfire being reported, Israelis charged that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was not keeping the agreement. Israeli Cabinet minister Haim Ramon warned that if the Palestinian attacks do not cease, Israel will respond with force, "and the Sharm e-Sheik understandings will collapse completely." The Palestinian Cabinet blamed Israel for the continuing violence. After meeting in Gaza late Thursday, the Cabinet said that Israel was not stopping settlers from firing at civilians. Settlers charged that Barak's government ordered the army not to cause Palestinian casualties, and that delayed their evacuation. "This is unacceptable, irresponsible and downright criminal," said settler spokeswoman Yehudit Tayar. She said Barak should be removed from office. In a statement, Barak said that only operational and tactical considerations guided the army's response. Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, the senior Israeli commander in the area, said there were no political constraints on the army's response. Eitan said that the regional command gave permission for the settlers' tour, despite an overall ban on such excursions because of the riots. Eitan admitted that this was a "grave error." The settlers' leadership council had a late-night meeting to consider a response to the battle. "We can't sit with our hands folded and allow this to happen," Tayar said. Israeli attack helicopters hovered over the scene for two hours before opening fire on the Palestinians with machine guns. Television pictures showed the Palestinians firing anti-aircraft guns at the helicopters, a first for this conflict. For the second week in a row, Israeli police imposed restrictions on Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, built over the ruins of the biblical Jewish temples, where two days of riots followed the Sept. 28 visit of hardline Israeli politician Ariel Sharon. Only men over 40 and women were to be permitted to enter the mosque area, a police statement said, citing intelligence reports that younger Palestinians planned to riot after the services. Several thousand Israeli police were sent to Jerusalem to head off violence. Western diplomatic sources said a call from CIA director George Tenet to Arafat helped resolve the incident on the mountain. The sources, who insisted on anonymity, said Tenet invoked the summit understandings, asked Arafat to allow Israel to evacuate the wounded settlers, and Arafat agreed. The spokesman for the U.S. embassy declined to comment.

(AP)