Clashes Test Pact On Safety Fury Over Israeli Project Puts Palestinian Police In Middle

Facing a roaring, surging crowd that hurled stones at Israeli soldiers guarding homes of Jewish settlers down the road, a group of Palestinian police officers on Sunday found themselves on the front line of an imperiled experiment in peace.

Grabbing young men as they leaped to hurl rocks, wrestling others away and pushing them back, the officers of the Palestinian Authority faced the wrath of their own people.

“Collaborator!” a man spat out at a Palestinian lieutenant who took on the crowd alone before reinforcements arrived. Just 30 yards behind the officer, across a coil of barbed wire, helmeted Israeli soldiers in full battle gear took cover in a sandbagged position and pointed rifles at the stone throwers.

“We are all Yahya Ayyash!” shouted the throng, invoking the name of a bomb maker from the militant Hamas movement who was assassinated by the Israelis last year. “With spirit and blood we will redeem you, martyr!”

Clashes set off by the start of work last week on a new Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem have severely tested the delicate security cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli forces here and throughout the West Bank.

But they have also been a trial for the Palestinian Authority, which is absorbing the rage of Palestinians disillusioned with its agreements with Israel. While the authority has condemned the construction in east Jerusalem, it has sent forces to curb violent protests, deepening the alienation of some Palestinians from their leadership.

Herding the jeering, whistling mob away with fellow officers on Sunday, the Palestinian lieutenant shouted a plea: “Have faith in your government! Our leadership understands the situation better. We salute your struggle, but not this way. This is a mistake! We don’t want a single drop of blood shed!”

A man in the crowd shouted back: “The intifada didn’t come from the government!” He used the Arabic word for the seven-year uprising against Israeli occupation that is being held up here as a model for a fresh wave of grass-roots street protests against Israel.

The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, asserted on Sunday that Palestinian security agents and members of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement have abetted the unrest. But Arafat’s police have been trying to restrain the crowds on the street. On Saturday, two Palestinian officers were struck by rubber bullets here as they stood between rioters and Israeli troops.

The protests have erupted with particular fury in Hebron. Since Friday, hundreds of young men have been converging daily on the border between the Palestinian and Israelicontrolled zones of the city, charging toward the settler enclaves and hurling stones at Israeli soldiers.

On Sunday, a chanting throng marching behind a Palestinian flag broke into a stampede, rushing lines of police reinforcements deployed on streets leading to the Jewish enclaves. The lines held in most places, but on one road, the crowd broke through with the battle cry “God is great!” and hurled rocks for half an hour before it was pushed away.

“We’re in a tight spot,” acknowledged another Palestinian lieutenant facing the crowds, who would not give his name. “We’re also against settlements, but, like any police force in the world, we have to keep the peace. Violence will only cause casualties on both sides, and we’ve gained more by political means.”

A member of the black-clad Rapid Intervention Unit, a crack Palestinian police squad whose members carried gas masks in case the Israelis used tear gas, said that things had changed since the years when he and his colleagues had themselves thrown stones at the Israelis on the streets during the intifada. Now, he said, “we have to put our feelings aside.”

In the Israeli-controlled part of town, a strict curfew kept Palestinians confined to their homes. So they looked on as Jewish settlers held a raucous costume parade through the empty streets to mark Purim, a festival commemorating the deliverance of the Jews in ancient Persia from a plot to kill them.

Dancing to music blasted from an ambulance and carrying brightly colored balloons and Israeli flags, the settlers were ringed by Israeli soldiers and police officers in bulletproof vests cradling rifles. One settler in a gorilla mask wore a T-shirt with the likeness of Arafat, and a boy wearing a plastic army helmet dressed up as a tank.

When the parade passed the Israeli checkpoint that had been stoned, the dancers formed a circle, dancing and waving flags in view of the Palestinian zone. Israeli soldiers went on alert, hoisting plastic shields in case there was a another barrage of stones. Palestinian police officers on the other side linked hands to prevent any Arabs from approaching.

“Thank God, we will not cancel our joy,” said Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the settlers. “We will not stop our natural life.”