Stone attack on Peres as campaign heats up

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 10

Stone attack on Peres as campaign heats up

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem The Israel Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres has escaped injury in a stonethrowing attack, as campaign violence surges three weeks ahead of Israeli elections. An assailant hurled a stone at Mr Peres’ car before a rally in the Israeli industrial town of Kiryat Gat. It was the fourth disruption this week of a campaign trip by the leader of the Centre-Left Labour Party, a partner in the coalition. Onlookers said the stone damaged the car roof and the thrower escaped in the dark. Mr Peres ignored the incident in his speech at the Kiryat Gat cultural centre. Labour and the Rightist Likud bloc of the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, have blamed each other for the rising violence. The two parties, traditional rivals, formed a unity Government after inconclusive elections in 1984. After the Kiryat Gat attack, Likud appealed to the police to identify and arrest the assailant. At the week-end, the police threatened to use tear-gas to break up a crowd of shouting Likud supporters who refused to let Mr Peres speak. After, one man cursed Mr Peres and splashed water in his face as police smuggled the Minister out. The campaign for the November 1 election has focused largely on how to achieve Middle East peace amid a 10-month Palestinian uprising in Israeli-occupied territories. Labour and Likud are at odds over the peace issue. Labour supports

convening an international Middle East peace conference and conceding occupied land for peace, both policies opposed by Likud. Mr Shamir, while urging supporters to exercise restraint, was also quoted by the Israeli press as saying of Mr Peres, “What can someone who broke up the unity expect? Love?” Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party, campaigning to expel the two million Arabs under Israeli rule, faced a High Court hearing on on whether to bar it from contesting the election. Legal experts said a five-judge court was likely to uphold an elections committee decision banning the bearded, New York-born Kahane, aged 56, based on a new law against racist and antidemocratic parties. In sporadic unrest on Monday, troops shot and wounded at least three Palestinians on the occupied West Bank. Mr Shamir’s news media adviser, Avi Pazner, scorned a Palestine Liberation Organisation decision to declare an independent State, although Palestinians living under Israeli occupation hailed the move. “They can declare whatever they like, it won’t change anything in our attitude towards a terrorist organisation whose ultimate aim is the destruction of Israel,” Mr Pazner told Reuters. Israeli and Palestinian farmers signed an agreement to allow direct exports of fruit and vegetables from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to the European Community for the first time.