Rabin promises to get tougher

Press, 12 June 1989, Page 10

Rabin promises to get tougher

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem Israel’s Defence Minister yesterday promised harsher measures to put down a Palestinian uprising as troops killed a boy and wounded 11 residents in the curfew-bound Gaza Strip.

The soldiers shot dead the Palestinian boy as he threw stones in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp. They later opened fire on mourners breaking a seven-day-old curfew to visit the boy’s home.

In an interview on army radio, the hawkish Defence Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said, "I believe the more we improve the means, the tools, find ways of more pointed and harsher punishments than those we had until now ... (the more we can calm the uprising).

“This is in the realm of punishing precise targets,

whether it is an individual, the house of someone involved in something or administrative detention for a longer period of time.”

Mr Rabin had been asked if harsher measures could calm the 18-month-old uprising against Israeli rule. He said Israel would expand prison space, currently for 8500 detainees, to a capacity of more than 10,000. The Army destroyed the homes of two Hamas Islamic fundamentalist activists last week.

In a month-long military crackdown in the territories, Mr Rabin has signalled that Palestinians will face a tougher iron fist if they reject an Israeli peace plan for elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to choose negotiators for talks with Israel.