YEAR IN REVIEW 5746 YEAR IN REVIEW
ROME AND VIENNA AIRPORTS were the scene of deadly attacks during Christmas
holidays when Arab terrorists hurled hand grenades and fired bursts of bullets into crowds of
holiday travelers. Sixteen people were killed and 110 injured in the two attacks.
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ACHILLE LAURO, an Italian cruise ship,
MARILYN KLINGHOFFER, was the widow was hijacked by a group of Palestinians in the
of Leon Klinghoffer, slain by Palestinian
Mediterranean. They killed an American invalid
terrorists last fall on board the Achille Lauro.
and were later freed, only to have their plane
intercepted and forced down by American
military jets.
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give up his foreign ministry post to Peres
just after Rosh Hashanah, would be far
less forthcoming in maintaining the peace
initiative.
Peres has pledged to continue his efforts
as Foreign Minister, after the rotation,
and can point to the fact that his labors
this year seem to have helped thaw the
"cold peace" that has existed between
Israel and Egypt since the war in Leb-
anon. The thorny border dispute over a
tiny stretch of beachfront known as Taba
appears to have been resolved, after seem-
ingly endless negotiations, and Mubarak,
in his first meeting with an Israeli head
of state, pledged to return his ambassador
to Israel after a four-year hiatus.
But Peres had less success on the home
front. Both he and Shamir were embar-
rassed by the continuing Shin Bet scan-
dal involving allegations that government
leaders covered up evidence pointing to
the secret police's involvement in the 1984
beating deaths of two Arab terrorists who
had hijacked an Israeli bus. Attorney
General Yitzhak Zarnir, who had ordered
the police investigation into the charges,
was replaced, but his successor vowed to
continue the inquiry.
Peres was also unable to quell the
escalating hostilities between ultra-
religious and secular Jews in Israel. An ob-
jectionable series of advertisements on
bus stops in religious neighborhoods of
Jerusalem featuring scantily-clad women
led some ultra-religious Jews to deface the
posters and even burn down several bus
stops. This, in turn, caused some secu-
larists to vandalize Orthodox synagogues
and yeshivas, burning Torahs and prayer-
books. The ugly episode underscored the
growing tension between the religious and
the secular in Israel, with other less
dramatic confrontations coming about
over changing the clocks (the Orthodox
argued that it would lead to more trans-
gressions of the Sabbath) and building
swimming pools in religious neighbor-
hoods.
There was also widespread Orthodox op-
position to the decision to allow a Mormon
center to be built in Jerusalem, stirring
debate on whether or not the Mormons in-
tended to proselytize.
Ethiopian Jews, struggling to make the
transition to life in Israel, protested
against the rabbinate's decision-that they
undergo a ritual circumcision before they
can be allowed to marry. A compromise of
sorts was reached but the bitterness and
misunderstanding between the Ethiopians
and the religious leadership continued.
In America, the issue of religious plur-
alism among Jews and fear that differ-
ences among Orthodox, Conservative,
Reform and Reconstructionist organiza-
tions would lead to a splintering of the
Jewish people prompted wide discussion
39