Diplomacy Search for Partners

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Even during one of the holiest times of the year, the bloodshed would not stop in the Holy Land. From secret locations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last week, leaders of the Palestinian uprising issued leaflets addressed to their stone-throwing followers. The order: step up the violence on Land Day, the twelfth anniversary of the deaths of six Israeli Arabs who were killed while they protested Israeli government confiscation of their property. Anticipating trouble, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin took the unprecedented step of sealing off the West Bank and Gaza for three days. He warned of harsher measures to come if the unrest did not end soon. Challenged Rabin: "Let's confront each other. We'll see who will be stronger."

The test of wills exploded into the worst violence since the troubles began in December. Though additional security forces were poured in, thousands of West Bank Palestinians commemorated Land Day by burning tires and attacking soldiers. By week's end, as Christians and Jews began their Easter and Passover observances, 18 more Palestinians had been shot dead by Israeli troops, which raised the toll to 139 in the four-month uprising.

As some waved the banned Palestine Liberation Organization flag, thousands of Israeli Arabs staged nonviolent Land Day demonstrations in sympathy with the Palestinians under occupation. The restrictions were lifted on Good Friday, but Israeli leaders did not withdraw their threats to quell the rioters. Declared Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir: "We say to them, from this hilltop and from the perspective of thousands of years of history, that in our eyes they are like grasshoppers."

As Shamir spoke, Secretary of State George Shultz was heading to the Middle East, his third such trip in five weeks to try to sell his peace plan. Shamir, who remains adamantly opposed to Shultz's proposals, had fresh reason to be concerned last week. Five days before the Secretary of State left Washington, he met for 90 minutes with two Palestinian-Americans. Both are members of the Palestine National Council, a parliament-in-exile with some 400 members that serves as an umbrella organization for the P.L.O. as well as for nonmilitary Palestinian institutions.

The two men, Professors Edward Said of Columbia University and Ibrahim Abu- Lughod of Northwestern University, are not official representatives of the P.L.O. Even so, Shamir charged that Shultz had violated a 1975 memorandum of understanding that bars U.S. diplomats from recognizing or negotiating with the P.L.O. until the group acknowledges Israel's right to exist. Said Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned his post as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations last week in order to speak out against the encounter as well as run for the Knesset: "The meeting marks a serious erosion in the U.S. commitment not to negotiate with the P.L.O."