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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (182)	12/31/2000 8:47:52 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 23908

Incidents like can be the start of War...Dec 31, 2000 - 06:55 PM Fury as Jewish Settlers Bury U.S. Militant's Son, Wife By Laura King Associated Press Writer JERUSALEM (AP) - Cries for revenge rang out Sunday as thousands of Jewish settlers thronged the funeral of American-born son of slain extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, only hours after he and his wife were killed in an ambush-style attack in the dry hills of the West Bank. As mourners for 34-year-old Binyamin Kahane marched through the streets of Jerusalem, a few hundred of them turned the funeral procession into a display of fury. They smashed windows, chased and beat Palestinians they encountered and shouted "Death to Arabs!" Palestinians, meanwhile, leveled their own accusations in two killings: that of a Palestinian villager who died early Monday after what witnesses described as a drive-by shooting by Jewish settlers, and what Palestinians called the deliberate assassination of a longtime associate of Yasser Arafat. The 22-year-old Palestinian was hit in the head Sunday when Jewish settlers in a vehicle opened fire on a crowd in his West Bank village, according to witnesses. Thabet Thabet, a senior activist in Arafat's Fatah faction, was gunned down Sunday outside his home in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The Israeli army said Thabet died in an exchange of fire; Palestinians said he was backing his car out of his driveway when men they believed were special Israeli forces drove past and sprayed him with gunfire. Israel has said it is targeting activists it considers responsible for attacks against Israelis, but made no such acknowledgment in this case. The high-profile killings - together with the two sides' sharp disagreements over terms of a U.S. peace plan - added yet more complications to President Clinton's hopes for a Mideast agreement. The violence of Jewish settlers' rhetoric - aimed as much at Prime Minister Ehud Barak as at the Palestinians - illustrated the dramatic difficulties the Israeli leader faces in his fight to win an accord before Feb. 6 elections that are effectively a referendum on his peace policies. Kahane's father, Meir Kahane, who headed the now-outlawed Kach movement that advocated expelling Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was shot and killed in 1990 after a speech in New York. After the elder Kahane's assassination, Binyamin Kahane founded the anti-Arab Kahane Chai, or Kahane Lives, movement, now also banned in Israel. A New York native, he lived in the West Bank settlement of Tapuah and ran a religious school. At the funeral for Binyamin Kahane and his 31-year-old wife, Talia - killed when gunmen fired on their car early Sunday, sending it crashing into a ditch and injuring five of their children - his brother Baruch delivered the eulogy in a cracking voice. "Take your fate in your own hands," he told a crowd of 2,000 people, many of them Jewish settlers. "This government that negotiates with murderers must be brought down, over the dead bodies of my family." Afterward, there were chaotic scenes as mourners marched to the cemetery on foot on a route that took them through the city as night fell. "Revenge, revenge!" some cried, while others chanted psalms. At one point, the crowd smashed the windows of a car driven by two Palestinians with a miniature replica of a disputed shrine dangling from the mirror. An ambulance had to pluck the occupants to safety. "Move back!" police shouted at the crowd through loudspeakers. Bands from the funeral procession broke away when they spotted Palestinians, stoning a food stand and reportedly attacking workers inside a grocery store with tear gas. There was no word of serious injuries to the crowd's intended victims. Ten policemen and a news photographer from Sweden was stabbed in the evening-long melee, which turned Jerusalem's downtown into a whirl of flashing police and ambulance lights. "There's a war going on!" speaker Shmuel Saged shouted at the crowd during a milling, hour-long stop before Barak's offices. "We need to see you tonight, tomorrow and the next day, until there is not a single Arab left in the country!" Barak denounced the morning's deadly attack, then met with his Cabinet, which said afterward that if the Palestinians do not accept the U.S. proposals as a framework for negotiations, Israel will "take a time out" in the peace process. Israel has accepted the Clinton plan as a basis for talks, albeit with grave misgivings. The Palestinians say they are awaiting clarification from Clinton on a number of points. The Kahane killings came one day after Arafat's Fatah movement urged followers and fighters "to struggle against Israeli soldiers and settlers" for the next two weeks to honor Fatah's anniversary. In the Lebanese capital of Beirut, a group calling itself the "Martyrs of the Al Aqsa Intefadeh" faxed a claim of responsibility for the attack to a Western news agency in Beirut. Its authenticity could not be verified. The Kahanes had just dropped one of their six children off at school; one of the youngsters in the car was hurt seriously, the hospital said. Late Sunday, a 28-year-old Israeli driver was seriously injured in an ambush shooting north of Jerusalem - the same kind of attack that hit Kahane's family. Through much of the recent violence - which has killed more than 350 people, almost all Palestinians - Palestinian gunmen have been staging roadside ambushes targeting Jewish settlers in the West Bank. "There will be no security ... for any Israeli settler on Palestinian land," Imad Falouji, Arafat's communications minister, told The Associated Press. "We advise them to leave our land peacefully before they leave it in coffins." ap.tbo.com AP-ES-12-31-00 1853EST