Israel sees bus hijack as attempt to undermine peace moves

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 10

Israel sees bus hijack as attempt to undermine peace moves

SUSAN SAPPIR

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem A bus hijack in which six people died was seen in Israel yesterday as a deliberate attempt by Palestinian guerrillas to undermine United States peace moves in the Middle East. I Three guerrillas took over a bus taking 60 workers, most of them women, from their homes in Beersheba on Monday to jobs at a topsecret nuclear reactor at !Dimona in the Negev desert. The guerrillas shot dead a man and two women before being killed by commandos who stormed the bus, Israeli officials said. The Defence Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said the

attack was aimed at sabotaging ' the ! United States peace initiative promoted by the Secretary of State, George Shultz. Mr Rabin told Israel radio that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine ! Liberation Organisation (P.L.0.) “instructed all the terror groups ... to accelerate, to intensify their activities, hopefully to undermine any [ hope for a political process of peace negotiations.’’ A caller for the P.L.O.’s “Force 17” commando unit claimed responsibility for the attack in a call to a news agency in Jerusalem. The gunmen threw hand grenades and fired a Kalashnikov assault rifle to seize the bus. The driver and all but a

dozen of the passengers escaped. Those who remained were taken hostage. [ The guerrillas demanded the release of all Palestinian j prisoners from Israeli jails, said Major-General Yitzhak Mordechai, head of the Israeli Army’s southern command. Stella Bachar, a 46-year-old mother of four children who survived the attack with a gunshot wound in the leg, told reporters the passengers tried to befriend their captors. “They looked very young ... We tried to make friends with them. They were armed,” she said. “We gave them milk. They said they were thirsty. We told them, ‘We

are mothers. What do you want from us?’ They said ‘We want red, red’ so we understood they wanted the Red Cross. “I kept telling them ‘What a shame, you are so young.’ I wanted to explain to them they are young, but they said ‘No. We will blow you up’.” The gunmen shot dead one hostage, Victor Ram, aged 39, a recently widowed engineer and the father of three children, witnesses said. At that point the military command ordered a special anti-terror unit to storm the bus. The commander of the unit told reporters his unit took over the bus, killing the three guerril- • las, in half a minute. Two women were killed and

eight wounded. Rina Shiratsky, aged 30, a mother of two, and Miriam Ben Yair, aged 42, who had three children, were killed by ! the guerrillas, according to the commander. The Chief of Staff, Dan Shomron, said in a radio interview the guerrillas penetrated Israel from Egypt’s Sinai Desert.! He said, he believed [the Egyptians were making efforts to prevent such infiltrations. [ Israeli politicians, divided over how [ the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, should respond to Mr Shultz’s proposal for an international peace conference leading to Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories, saw the hijacking as a setback to peace. [ ■

Ai Right-wing legislator, Yehoshua Matza, said: “It is inconceivable to respond to any political plan as long [its terrorism dares to rise and strike us.” A Leftist, Yair Tzaban, urged the P.L.O. to “condemn the criminal action and reject its perpetrators.” Otherwise, he said, it would be shown to have “the evil intent of disrupting the peace initiative being built now.” ' Israel television said Palestinian leaders ini the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip denounced the hijack and said it would have harmful i effects on a three-mohth-old uprising in which 87 Palestinians have died..