The extremists Israelis call terrorists

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 10

The extremists Israelis call terrorists

By

ETHAN BRONNER, of

Reuter (through NZPA) Jerusalem An abortive plot by Jewish extremists to blow up bus-loads of Arab civilians has renewed accusations that Israel’s settlements on the Palestinian West Bank serve as a breeding ground for violent extremism.. The 20-odd unnamed suspects detained since Friday are mostly settlers. For the first time, police and officials find themselves using the word “terrorist” for Jews, which Israelis have until now reserved for Arab guerrillas. For the 1.3 million Arabs on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip who have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967, the nature of their plight has taken a new turn. Until the last Jew years their main

ies were the occupation forces. Today, their leaders say, they are faced with religiously-inspired violence from Jewish extremists, a more insidious and frightening enemy. The most dramatic incidents have been the unsolved car-bomb attacks on West Bank mayors in 1980 and a gun-and-grenade raid on Palestinian students in Hebron last year. The settlers have always maintained that their actions did not exceed justifiable retribution for attacks on Jews. But Palestinian and some Israeli leaders say that the settlements themselves encourage violence against Arabs. Avraham Ahituv, former head of the General Security Services, wrote last year that the Government’s policy of encouraging settle-

ment throughout the occupied territories, including areas with large Arab popu T lations, “has served as a hothouse for the growth of this (Jewish) terror...” The Left-wing newspaper, “Davar,” said, “believers in a greater Israel can now be sure that their position will always mean terror, sabotage and an underground.” The hardline Gush Emunim (Faith Bloc) movement, which has spearheaded the settlement drive, has no misgivings about confrontation with the Arabs. Its larger goal, the rebirth of Jewish nationalism throughout the Biblical land of Israel, takes precedence over social harmony. Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who set up the first settlement on the West Bank — Kiryat Arba, near Hebron — ha:* summed it up this

way, “The Jewish national rennaissance is more important than democracy. The fate of the land of Israel and a free and whole Jewish life in it are not subject to a majority vote.” Rabbi Levinger lives with his wife and 11 children in siege-like conditions in the heart of Hebron. A mosque lies below his spartan flat, an Israeli machine-gun position on the flat roof above. While all of the 30,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories do not share his views, the very nature of the settlement drive causes great anxiety among the local Arabs. The Israeli Government says that it simply wants Jews and Arabs to live together. Yet there is a marked difference in the way the two groups live. Jonathan Kuttab, a

tinian lawyer in Ramallah, said, “The Jews in the West Bank have already developed a kind of mini-State — their own public services, separate Government administration, effectively segregated roads, water and sewage systems and an ambitious... economic development programme.” Jewish settlers are given the right to carry guns, but Arabs may be searched or detained if seen carrying sharp objects. The Defence Minister, Mr Moshe Arens, defends this policy, saying that it has prevented Palestinian guerrilla activity in the territories. He also defends Jewish settlement on the West Bank on historical and religious grounds. Hebron, for example, is holy to Jews as the site of the graves of the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob. There were Jewish settlements in many of the West Bank towns until 1948 when the Jordanian Army destroyed them and forbade anybody of Jewish origin from living in or visiting the area. Some tiny groups in Israel draw another lesson from history. Extremists, such as the American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, who heads the Kach (Thus) movement, says that the only way to deal with Arabs in Israel is to expel them. After booby-trapped grenades were planted in Muslim and Christian sites this year, Rabbi Kahane said, “I believe these acts are totally consistent with Judaism but... the longrange, ultimate answer not to place a few

amateurish bombs at Arab doors but the expulsion of the Arabs of Eretz Israel (the Biblical land of Israel).”

The grenade attacks were part of a recent upsurge of violence against Arabs, much of it claimed as revenge for Palestinian attacks in Israel. Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque was the site of an attempted bombing in January and a bus carrying Arab workers was fired on by Kahane supporters, some living on the West Bank. The police arrested three separate groups, one of which has a messianic religious basis. Such extremism has proved to be an acute embarrassment to the Government Shamir.