But Israel is no longer willing to leave a lunatic fringe of the settler movement to pursue Kahane’s violent, anti-Arab vision. Dr. Baruch Goldstein changed that two weeks ago when he slaughtered dozens of Muslims at prayer in Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs. Two days after the massacre Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s cabinet moved for the first time to officially suppress Kahane’s followers, invoking the same tough security laws Israel uses to combat Arab unrest. Rabin’s language was categorical. Jewish radicals like Axelrod “are not part of the congregation of Israel,” Rabin told the Knesset. “Sensible Judaism spits you out.”
Rabin’s rhetoric did not satisfy Palestinians bent on revenge. Neither did Israel’s stepped-up release of nearly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. “The Israeli government crossed a threshold, but the Palestinians can’t see that right now,” said a senior Clinton administration official.
In a week of unrest, Israeli soldiers killed about 30 Arab rioters-more than half the number killed in the Hebron massacre. Bowing to internal pressure and rampant defections in his ranks, Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat said he would boycott ongoing peace talks until Rabin disarmed all Jewish settlers and agreed to the deployment of an armed international force in the occupied territories. “The armed presence is basic,” he told NEWSWEEK late Saturday (box). “It is the Palestinians who are in need of security.” Arafat also initially demanded talks on the fate of the roughly 170 settlements-a nettlesome question that was deferred until 1996 under last September’s agreement on interim self-rule for Palestinians in Jericho and Gaza.
Rabin flatly rejected the demands, and U.S. officials predicted that Arafat would eventually accept a more vaguely defined “international presence” in the territories as the sole price of returning to the table. In an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK, Rabin suggested that the stalled talks could soon resume (box). “I expect the Palestinians not to let this terrible and horrible Jewish murderer achieve his goal,” he said.
Rabin’s immediate challenge was to make good on his pledge to control the militant settlers of Kahane’s Kach movement and its offshoots. To some Israelis, the crackdown looked halfhearted, even laughable. “I’m enjoying watching the police from my window run around like mice,” Baruch Marzel, one of six leading militants police sought to detain, told an Israeli reporter. A week after announcing the crackdown on Kach and related groups, only two of the six leaders had been captured. Although at least 18 militant settlers were ordered to give up their army-issued assault rifles, many continued to display them in public. Members of the settlement where Goldstein lived, Kiryat Arba, moved freely in and out of the fenced-in community even after the army had officially declared it closed. “The army cannot control the settlers,” charged Hebrew University political scientist Ehud Sprinzak. Most of the settlers who are reservists serve annually in the army; Goldstein used an army-issued assault rifle and uniform during the massacre. But the radicals’ best weapon, said Sprinzak, is the police scanner. “They know exactly where the army is and where it is not,” he said, arguing that special intelligence units are needed.
Experience has taught the radicals not to fear government authority. For years they have attacked Arabs with impunity, say human-rights workers. They say settlers seeking to avenge Arab violence burn Palestinian cars, break windows, shoot holes in rooftop water tanks and injure or even kill Palestinians without much fear of legal repercussions. “There are extremely good relations between the settlers and army, police and security people,” says lawyer Avigdor Feldman, who often represents Palestinians. ‘Actions by the settlers are always regarded as self-defense, even if they had nothing to do with self-defense." Palestinians are tried in military courts, settlers in more lenient Israeli civilian courts. Settlers who kill Arabs often have been given token sentences, or freed altogether. Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a firebrand who helped found a Jewish settlement in the midst of Hebron, served only three months for shooting to death a Palestinian who happened to be outside his shop when Levinger’s car was stoned. In another such case, a judge sentenced the settler to community service, noting that he had been a victim of “cruelty committed by Gentiles” during his life. Many cases don’t even get that far. Researchers from the human-rights group B’Tselem found 48 instances of Palestinians being killed by settlers between 1988 and 1992; only 11 even went to trial.
In the aftermath of the Hebron massacre, Rabin tried to shift responsibility to the United States. “This killer emerged from a small and limited political framework,” he told the Knesset. “He grew up in a swamp whose roots are overseas.” Rabin neglected the fact that many radical settlers are not connected to the Kahanists, who number only in the hundreds. The Jewish Underground, which conducted a series of bombings against Palestinians in the early 1980s, had no connection to Kach. Even Kahane’s movement, which counts several dozen U.S.-born Jews as members, now is run from within Israel, says Sprinzak. “It’s not an American operation, not a Brooklyn operation,” he said. And in Washington, officials complain that Israel has impeded efforts to prosecute a group of Kahane supporters suspected in a string of U.S. bombings in the mid-1980s,
Both governments now are seeking new leverage against the extremists. Israel’s immigration chief spoke of declaring the Kahane organizations illegal and barring any member from entering Israel. U.S. officials were reported to be studying the legality of restricting donations to Kach and its offshoots. But even if a ban on such donations were judged legal, it would be difficult to enforce. “We tell the donor, ‘Send it directly to Israel’,” said Michael Guzofsky, a spokesman for the Kahane organization in Brooklyn. “I don’t know how the authorities can restrict that.”
Ultimately, Israel will have to take much sterner measures to prevent a bloody showdown between Palestinians and settlers when troops begin to withdraw from parts of the occupied territories. Several cabinet ministers said Rabin should act soon to remove the small, hypermilitant settlement in the heart of Hebron, a constant source of friction. But Zvi Katsover, head of the local council in Kiryat Arba, warned that if Israel attempts such a move, “you will find some people who would make Goldstein look like a small child.” Even with the backing of an outraged electorate, Rabin evidently thought it too great a risk to send troops to evict the zealots. Said Sprinzak: “The people will have to vote on that.”
Rabin’s support depends largely on his ability to ensure security for Israelis. And it’s only a matter of time before Palestinian terrorists hit back to avenge Hebron. “There is blood between us now,” explained Imad al-Jabari, a 24-year-old mechanic who survived the Hebron massacre. Islamic militants promised that “screaming and crying” would be heard “in all Israeli cities”; like the settlers of Kach, they oppose the peace agreement. Some Israeli commentators wondered whether Rabin’s crackdown on the Kahanists would survive the inevitable reprisal especially if Palestinian officials fail to strongly condemn it. Both Rabin and Arafat need autonomy to begin soon, before more blood is spilled and the peace process slips even farther backward.
