Government Gives Arafat an Ultimatum
(Palestinian Militants Kill Israeli Cabinet Official)
By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 18, 2001
JERUSALEM, Oct. 18 (Thursday) -- Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, an extreme nationalist who advocated emptying Israeli-occupied territories of all Palestinians, was shot dead in a hotel hallway Wednesday by at least one Palestinian assassin. It was the first murder of an Israeli cabinet minister by Palestinians in the Jewish state's 53-year history.
The killers escaped, but the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) asserted responsibility, saying the murder was carried out to avenge Israel's killing of its own leader, Mustafa Zibri, in a missile attack on Aug. 27.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared hours after the killing that a "new era has begun." After a lengthy meeting of Israel's security cabinet, the government gave Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat an ultimatum: Hand over the killers and the PFLP's current leaders and dismantle terror organizations, or face a response more severe than any recent attack on the Palestinians.
"The time for words has ended and the time for deeds has come," said a formal statement from the government.
Arafat condemned the assassination and called for the arrest of the killers but had no immediate response to the Israeli ultimatum.
Zeevi's death dealt a new and serious blow to efforts by the United States to coax the Israelis and Palestinians to contain 13 months of violence, a task that has assumed added urgency for Washington as a means of helping hold together its coalition against international terrorism.
The assassination could trigger a fresh wave of violence in a conflict that has already left more than 800 people dead since September 2000.
[Early today, Israeli troops entered Palestinian-controlled territory on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Jenin, the Reuters news agency reported. Palestinian officials and witnesses said about eight tanks rolled about 2 1/2 miles into Palestinian-ruled territory, but stopped on the edge of Jenin.]
Unless the Palestinians comply with Israel's ultimatum, "our response will be much more severe than what we've done until now," said Uzi Landau, Israel's minister of public security.
In an emergency session of the full Israeli cabinet, Sharon blamed the assassination on Arafat, saying the Palestinian leader had failed to rein in terrorists. Several Israeli ministers likened the slaying to the Sept. 11 suicide airplane attacks in the United States, and said that Israel is justified in making a military response, just as the United States is doing in Afghanistan.
"We will wage all-out war on the terrorists, those who collaborate with them and those who send them," Sharon told a hastily convened special session of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, where Zeevi's empty chair was covered with a black sash. "His legacy we will fulfill. May God avenge his blood." A state funeral was scheduled for Thursday.
As an initial response, Israel reimposed a tight blockade on the Palestinian West Bank town of Ramallah, after having relaxed it on Monday, and barred Arafat from using the Palestinian airport in the Gaza Strip.
Sharon spokesman Arnon Perlman indicated that armed strikes were an option being considered. "What happened today requires a reassessment in all fields -- military, political and international," he said. "This reassessment will have profound significance."
The U.N. special envoy for the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, issued a statement on Arafat's behalf, saying the Palestinian leader condemned Zeevi's murder "in the strongest possible terms" and had instructed his security chiefs to arrest the killers. The Reuters news agency reported today that Israel knows the identities of the killers and will give Palestinian authorities their names. The statement also said Arafat pledged to prevent further "acts of violence and terrorism."
But several Palestinian officials said Sharon was to blame for having intensified Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian militants and political leaders. Palestinians, anticipating Israeli air and artillery strikes, evacuated security and government offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"Every time an incident like this occurs, Israel holds the Palestinian Authority responsible," said Jamil Tarifi, a Palestinian official. "It should be understood that the continuation of Israel's policy of assassinations . . . was bound to cause a reaction on the Palestinian street."
Some top Israeli officials demanded that Arafat find and extradite the killers, but the Palestinians have always refused Israel's extradition requests. Israel Radio reported that Arafat's security forces had arrested a high-ranking member of the PFLP in the West Bank, but Palestinian officials did not immediately confirm the arrest.
Zeevi was shot shortly before 7 a.m. as he was returning from breakfast to his room on the 8th floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in East Jerusalem, where he often stayed when the Knesset was in session. He was hit in the head and neck by two or three bullets, and his wife found his lifeless body sprawled in the corridor moments later.
Initial reports suggested there were no witnesses to the shooting, and no one who may have heard the gunshots came forward publicly. Police said the murder may have been the work of two assassins using pistols equipped with silencers.
Israel Radio reported that just before he was shot, Zeevi told his wife over breakfast that he was suspicious of an Arab in the dining room who seemed to be watching him. Police said they were interviewing the Hyatt Regency's 100-odd guests and its staff of 250, about 40 percent of whom are Arabs.
Zeevi, 75, a retired army general and perhaps the most hard-line nationalist in the Israeli cabinet, had announced on Monday his decision to quit the government to protest what he regarded as Sharon's timid military response to Palestinian attacks. By law, his resignation would have taken effect 48 hours later, this afternoon.
Although Zeevi usually carried a pistol, police said he was unarmed at the time of the attack. He had elected not to have a bodyguard, though his colleagues said he feared assassination. After the killing, Israel's General Security Service ordered bodyguards for all government ministers, as well as an internal review of security procedures.
It was not clear whether Zeevi was targeted because of his political views or because he was known to be relatively unprotected.
Shortly after Zeevi's death, the PFLP released a video asserting responsibility. Three men appeared in the video, two of them holding M-16 rifles, their faces masked with red-and-white checked headdresses. Standing next to a poster of Zeevi, one read a statement in the name of what he called the Brigades of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, the nom de guerre of the leader who was killed in an attack by Israeli helicopter gunships.
"The assassination of the Zionist criminal Rehavam Zeevi is only the first step according to the principles of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and one head for three heads," said the man, reading. Addressing the group's late leader, who was hit by Israeli missiles, he said Zeevi's murder means "that you can rest in your grave."
The PFLP is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. It staged a number of spectacular attacks in the 1970s, including airplane hijackings. But its leadership had declared that the time for such operations had passed and the group was relatively dormant until the current round of violence erupted last year.
In recent months, it has staged a number of car bombings and other attacks around Jerusalem and elsewhere. In Palestinian politics, the PFLP functions as an opposition group, having rejected the 1993 Oslo agreement that created the Palestinian Authority. But Sharon's government contends that Arafat has in effect joined forces with the group and acquiesces in its bombings and other attacks on Israel.
Zibri, 64, who took over the group's leadership two years ago, was the most prominent Palestinian to be assassinated by Israel in years.
With the possible exception of Sharon, no one on the Israeli political scene so inflamed Palestinians' fury as Zeevi. A member of Israel's founding generation of Zionist fighters, he regarded Arabs simply as enemies, opposed all peace overtures and clung to the conviction that tough military action alone was the antidote to Israel's security problems.
Sharon told the Knesset today that Zeevi was "a Zionist in every limb of his body." Israelis of every political stripe agreed, and many cited as proof the names of three of his five children: Palmach, a Jewish militia that predated Israeli independence; Arava, a region of southern Israel; and Masada, a high plateau overlooking the Dead Sea where Jewish fighters held out for months against a far superior force of Romans 2,000 years ago.
As a former top general and a lawmaker who served in the Knesset since 1988, Zeevi was a household name in Israel, reviled for his views by the dovish left and regarded as something of a throwback even by his colleagues on the hawkish right. To one and all, he was known as "Gandhi," an improbable nickname he picked up as a teenager by dressing up on one occasion as the Indian pacifist.
"He represented the [Israeli] Mayflower generation, people who fought for Israel's creation," said Moshe Arens, a former defense minister. "And his political views were the very same ones on which he was educated."
Zeevi was the most prominent and passionate advocate of what he called "transfer." By that he meant the departure from the West Bank and Gaza Strip of more than 3 million Arabs, many of whose families have been on the land for centuries. He said the departure should be "voluntary," but Arabs believed be favored outright expulsion, and they cited his inflammatory rhetoric as proof.
"In this area can exist only one country," he once said. "This is our forefathers' land. We suggest that the Arabs will go back to the lands from where they came. [This] transfer ideology is not invented by me nor by the Israelis, it happens everywhere in the world. In the 20th century, 124 million people were transferred from one country to another."
This summer, he likened Palestinians working illegally in Israel to "lice" and a "cancer" that had to be eradicated. When the moderate Palestinian leader in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, died last spring, Zeevi scolded Israelis for mourning, insisting that Husseini was "an enemy."
Well-educated, eloquent and a stickler for grammar, Zeevi was a bibliophile whose home near Tel Aviv was stocked with thousands of volumes of history and literature, more than 60 of which he had edited. Some of his most ardent political rivals said he was civil in person despite political differences.
But he was also capable of coarse behavior and crude language.
In a dispute over expanding Jewish settlements, he once called the first President George Bush a liar and an anti-Semite. And in the Knesset four years ago, he called the then-U.S. ambassador, Martin Indyk, a "Jew boy" to his face; Indyk had been pressing Israel for concessions in negotiations with the Palestinians.
He made no bones about his distaste for Arabs, including Arab Israeli citizens who served as lawmakers in the Knesset. He often heckled their speeches and spoke of them derisively. In today's special Knesset session to commemorate Zeevi's death, most of the 10 Arab lawmakers did not show up.
"He was a racist, he was an extremist, he was a fundamentalist," said Issam Makhoul, a leftist Arab lawmaker who did attend the session. "I thought he was an obstacle to democracy in Israel."
His resignation from the government meant that six other lawmakers from his party, National Union, and members of a small bloc called Our Home Is Israel, would have followed him, split with Sharon and entered the opposition. But after Zeevi's death, the six announced they would reconsider the move and stay in the governing coalition for at least a week to give the government a chance to prove its mettle.
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Best Regards, J.T. |
