Middle East In the Eye Of a Revolt

The day was Friday, the time shortly after noon. Prayer services had just ended at the al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites for both Islam and Judaism. As several hundred young men streamed out of the mosque, the shouts began. "There is no God but Allah!" "Allah is great!" The banned red-black-and-green Palestinian flag was raised, and Israeli and American banners burned. A thousand Israeli police, stationed there in case trouble broke out, began firing tear gas to disperse the crowd. But they were driven back by a shower of rocks and broken concrete.

For the next two hours police chased the agile, cursing demonstrators around the 30-acre Temple Mount and through the narrow, winding streets of Jerusalem's Old City. Protesters, tourists and the police themselves choked on the cloud of tear gas that enshrouded the golden Dome of the Rock, the ciborium that stands on the site from which the Prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven on a white horse. At one point, after a police officer was beaten, his comrades chased a group of demonstrators into al-Aqsa mosque itself, normally off limits to any military personnel. The fearsome scene seemed to encapsulate all the hatred of the Arab-Israeli conflict: Muslim and Jew literally battling for control of the most revered territory in the Holy Land.

Something tragic is happening in Israel and its occupied territories. For five weeks mayhem and bloodshed have engulfed the land, particularly the Gaza Strip and the towns of the West Bank, as the Palestinians who have lived in a wary truce with their Israeli rulers for two decades have let the world know that enough is enough. Each day last week brought another killing or two, raising the death toll since early December to at least 36. The Israelis seemed bewildered by the chaos, uncertain what to do next as they came to realize that they were fighting not just a few troublemakers but an entire population, whose ire was being fanned by militant Islamic fundamentalism. "We are dealing with a new phenomenon that we are only beginning to recognize," said a senior official. Added Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: "It is one national will against another national will."

As the streets of the Gaza Strip seethed and a general strike paralyzed commerce throughout the territories, the Israeli government sent in more troops, arrested more Palestinians, and cracked down on the violence harder than ever. "We must get a political solution by political means and not as a result of terror," said Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who is in charge of the occupied territories. "Arab terror will be confronted by the power of the Israel Defense Forces."

Though Rabin for the first time acknowledged the spontaneous nature of the uprising, he and other officials still hoped to quell the rioting by acting against what officials insist are the "ringleaders" of the violence. Four such men were loaded aboard an Israeli helicopter last week and flown to a mountain road near the town of Hasbeya, in southern Lebanon. There they were handed $50 each and told not to return to their homes. To help the exiles on their way, the soldiers flagged down two Mercedes taxis and paid the drivers to take them away.