Massacre In A Mosque

The massacre in Israeli-occupied Hebron was one of those spectacularly gruesome events that can stun the whole world, even against the backdrop of a long conflict that has already killed thousands of people. Like the shelling of Sarajevo’s marketplace four weeks ago, the murderous rampage by an American-born Israeli settler seemed to mark a turning point, after which nothing would be quite the same. Perhaps, as in Sarajevo, a senseless act of slaughter will give new impetus to peace. Or, given that this is the Middle East. perhaps not. Extremists on both sides want to sabotage the peace agreement signed last September by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The murders in the mosque give them their best opportunity yet.

The perpetrator turned out to be a 38-year-old physician named Baruch Goldstein, who immigrated to Israel 11 years ago from the New York City borough of Brooklyn, a hotbed of militant Orthodox Jews (box, page 36). His friends said Goldstein apparently timed his attack with care: last Friday was the second sabbath in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan-and the first day of Purim, when Jews celebrate a military victory by their ancestors in ancient Persia. Goldstein was a fanatic, a follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and, like him, an advocate of expelling all Arabs from what extremist Jews expansively define as the Land of Israel. “He could not have picked a better day-the first day of Purim, a day when the Jews fight back,” said Mike Guzofsky, a leader of the U.S. branch of a group called Kahane Chai (Kahane Lives).

Goldstein apparently killed about 40 Arabs in the mosque and wounded 150 or more. No exact count of fatalities was possible because Palestinians frequently bury their dead in a hurry, to avoid Israeli autopsies. The atrocity sparked clashes with nervous Israeli troops in Hebron and elsewhere, causing the death of one Israeli and about 20 more Palestinians. “This man has killed the peace process,” said Diab Sharabati, a Palestinian lawyer in Hebron. “It’s clear that we cannot live together with the settlers.”

Would-be peacemakers tried to stifle the flames. Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin apologized to the Palestinians. “As an Israeli, I am ashamed of this deed,” he said in a phone call to PLO leader Yasir Arafat in Tunis. President Clinton invited the Israelis and Palestinians to move their peace talks to Washington, starting as early as this week. The talks aim at implementing last September’s agreement by establishing initial Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho. Clinton announced that both sides had accepted his invitation to Washington, and he said the negotiators would “stay here in continuous session until their work is completed.” His administration hoped to transform the horror into an opportunity. “It sounds ghoulish, but this is very similar to what went on after the marketplace attack,” said a top White House aide. “We can use it for momentum to drive the process.”

But the Palestinians had fresh doubts about the peace process. Many of them refused to accept Rabin’s assurance that the massacre was “the deranged action of a lunatic individual.” Some Arabs who lived through the chaos in the mosque said they thought Goldstein had one or more accomplices. “In the beginning, I heard shots from two different directions,” a wounded Palestinian named Husni Issa Rajabi said from his bed in a Jerusalem hospital. “Then I saw two men dressed as soldiers. One was helping the other reload the gun.” Later a group calling itself the Organization of Avengers phoned Israeli Army radio to announce that the massacre was retaliation for the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Kahane in New York City (an Arab was acquitted of the murder but convicted on related weapons charges). But if another gunman was involved in the mosque attack, no one produced him, or his body.

Rajabi and other survivors also charged that Israeli soldiers outside the mosque shot at Palestinians as they fled in terror from what they thought was an army attack. Israeli television reported late last week that two soldiers had rushed into the mosque after the shooting began. They saw Goldstein struggling with some Palestinians; thinking a comrade was in trouble, they fired their weapons, the broadcast said. Military officials said they were still investigating.

The Palestinians also blamed Rabin’s government for not keeping a tighter leash on the more militant West Bank settlers. Yasir Abed Rabbo, a member of the PLO executive committee, said the massacre resulted from an “Israeli government policy that armed settlers and gave them the right to fire on Palestinians.” The PLO demanded that Israel disarm the settlers, and it asked the United Nations to send peacekeeping forces to the occupied territories.

Arafat also recalled his negotiators to Tunis, and the PLO said it hadn’t formally decided yet whether to send a delegation to the talks in Washington. In fact Arafat had already made that commitment to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. But the PLO leader needed to look tough, and evidently he hoped to extract an initial concession from Israel on the status of the settlers. Arafat was hurt politically by the attack on the mosque. His stature had shrunk in the occupied territories, where frustration has mounted steadily since the negotiators missed the Dec. 13 target date for the start of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho. Now Palestinian extremists were saying the massacre ruled out any further negotiations with Israel. Hamas, the militant Islamic group in the territories, warned that Arafat would “pay the price” if he continued to dicker. But negotiation is Arafat’s only realistic option; he lacks the muscle to fight. To regain the political ground he has lost, the PLO leader needs to make Palestinian autonomy a reality as quickly as possible.

And Israel has to do something, at last, about the more belligerent settlers. For years, they have had almost a license to kill. Many of them are allowed to carry automatic weapons; Goldstein, a major in the reserves, apparently used a military-issue Galil for the massacre. Feeling threatened by the Arabs whose land they claim, they are all too quick on the trigger. And when settlers attack Palestinians, the punishment (if any) tends to be light. “There is a pattern of official tolerance toward illegal acts against Palestinians by settlers,” says Eitan Felner of the Israeli human-rights group B’tselem, which is about to issue a report on the subject. “on many, many occasions, soldiers have witnessed illegal acts and done nothing to stop them.”

Rabin’s government insists that the status of the 120,000 settlers is not negotiable now. The deal Israel cut with the PLO said the settlements would remain in place under Palestinian autonomy, with the issue to be resolved at a later stage. “It’s well understood by our side that this tragedy is a very painful event,” said Oded BenAmi, a Rabin spokesman, “but the fact that there was a deranged man living in one of the settlements cannot change the agenda.” Ben-Ami added, however, that the government was considering “steps” to exert more control over armed Jewish militants living on the West Bank. In the past, the settlers have had enough political clout to fend off such restraints. But perhaps not anymore. “They’re really on the defensive after this,” said a White House official. “What they did is similar to dropping a mortar [shell] into the middle of a marketplace.” If an upheaval can be avoided in the days ahead, Goldstein’s murderous attempt to block the path toward peace could yet become a breakthrough.

title: “Massacre In A Mosque” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-08” author: “Patricia Roberts”