OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 21 July — Israel killed a Palestinian and kidnapped another yesterday as an extremist group of settlers called for the murder of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
“We call on all men to seize the first occasion to kill Arafat,” says an ad in this week’s edition of the “Makor Richon” right-wing weekly. “If you, soldier, see Arafat in his helicopter, aim your rifle or tank gun at him, if you, agent with Shin Bet (Israeli internal security) you see his convoy don’t hesitate to take his life,” the ad by Zou Artzenou (it is our country) say.
The extreme right-wing organization led by a settler, Moshe Feiglin, has led a violent campaign by the settlers to condemn the signing of the autonomy accords with the Palestinians in 1993.
Sounding a call to “rise up against settler dogs”, thousands of Palestinians poured out their grief and defiance at the funeral yesterday of a three-month-old baby killed by suspected Israeli gunmen.
In fresh violence, two explosions ripped through a house next to the office of Arafat’s Fatah faction in Hebron, killing Rajai Abu Rajab, 35, and wounding at least three others, security and hospital officials said. A Palestinian official said Israeli troops fired missiles, targeting the Fatah office but hitting the house by mistake. Earlier yesterday, Palestinians buried Diya Tmeizi, the youngest victim of some 10 months of bloodshed, wrapped in a tiny Palestinian flag and carried through the West Bank city of Hebron to his home village, Ithna. Only the boy’s head, a red welt on his brow, was visible.
The United States condemned as “barbaric” the attack in which two adult relatives were also killed when Jewish settlers sprayed bullets at the Tmeizi family car near Hebron on Thursday.
Thursday’s attack prompted an urgent appeal from the Palestinian Authority for foreign observers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a deployment rejected by Israel which condemned the shooting and vowed to bring the gunmen to justice. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, however, said Israel might agree to US Central Intelligence Agency personnel as observers but no one else. “We are opposed to any observers but if they were imposed on us the presence of American observers would be acceptable,” he told public radio. “We could agree to this because the United States follows closely what is happening,” Ben Eliezer said.
In a hastily released statement after the interview, Ben Eliezer clarified that “in an extreme situation he would accept the sending of members of the CIA,” but that he still rejected “the presence of another international force.” The United States was among the Group of Eight nations which has agreed to the idea of foreign monitors for the conflict.
