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Violence And Peace

IntheaiermathoftheRoshHashanahviolence,Barakaces challenges to get tougher with Arabs:

AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel

DAVID LANDAU

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jerusalem

fter two weeks of the worst
violence in the Mideast in
decades left 90 dead and hun-
Air eds wounded, leaders of the
world community were trying this week
to bring the area back from the brink of
war. And inside Israel, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak faced a mounting political
challenge to get tougher with the Arabs
both inside and outside Israel.
On Tuesday, after repeated pleas from
U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan,
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat finally
asked his youth group, Tanzim, to break
off the street confrontations with IDF
troops. Clinton planned a trip to the
Mideast, possibly Cairo, for a summit
that would include Barak and Arafat,
but it was not clear that the meeting
would take place or that it could perma-
nently defuse the violence.
The violence, which erupted Sept. 28
after Likud leader Ariel Sharon visited
the Temple Mount area that is also
sacred to Muslims, seemed to mark a
seismic shift in Israeli-Arab relations.
,Since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, rela-
tions have proceeded under the assump-
tion that the two sides were "partners in
peace."
As Arab Israelis, 18 percent of the 6.3
million citizens, joined their Palestinian
kinsmen in the fighting, that partnership
seemed to have dissolved. The deadly
Arab-on-Jew and Jew-on-Arab violence
within the country sent shock waves
through Israelis as they tuned in to the
news after Yom Kippur ended Monday
night.
(The fighting shocked and saddened
Jews in America, with many wondering
if the peace process were over.
Community groups planned rallies and
other demonstrations of solidarity with
Israel (see story at right).

Related editorial: page 39

The Israeli Cabinet, in emergency
session through much of Monday night,
issued a somber statement deploring the
violence involving the state's majority
Jewish and minority Arab populations.
Barak told Israel at dawn Tuesday
that each citizen, Jew and Arab alike,
shared responsibility for preserving the
delicate Jewish-Arab relationship built
up painstakingly over the five decades of
the state's existence. Although both sides
seemed at midweek to be backing away
from the shooting and stone-throwing,
Barak's admonition was a little like
Pharoah urging the waves to stop.
Further, the street battles may quickly
become part of the political contest
between Israel's political right and left
despite rhetoric from both sides calling
for unity at this time of national emer-
gency.

Mobs And Vigilantes

The death toll among Israeli
Arabs since the unrest
began in late September
rose to at least 13 over
Yom Kippur with the
shooting in Nazareth of
two Arab men. Three oth-
ers were seriously wound-
ed by gunshots fired in the
city that has Israel's largest Arab
population.
Israeli Arab leaders blamed
police for the shootings, but
police said the fatal shots were
most likely fired by civilians.
The violence in Nazareth
was the worst of a series of
events that had Arabs attacking
Jewish cars and property, and
Jewish vigilantes attacking
Arabs and Arab property
around the country. One
day after Palestinian mobs
destroyed the Jewish holy
site of Joseph's Tomb in
the West Bank city of
Nablus, Jewish mobs

attacked an old mosque in downtown
Tiberias.
The violence continued with arson
attacks on synagogues in Jaffa and
Ramla, and Jewish looting of Arab shops
in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and other
towns.
The exact order of events remains
unclear, reinforcing Israeli Arab leader-
ship's demands for a state inquiry into
what happened. While these leaders
have stopped short of calling for a gener-
al strike, they want to know who is
responsible for the deaths.
Even within Barak's own coalition,
there has been increasingly strident criti-
cism against the police for acting too
forcefully against Israeli Arab rioters.

Political Recriminations

The violence within Israel's borders has
become the subject of debate among the
nation's politicians.

HARRY KIRSBAUM

StaffWrit-er

I In recent weeks, Jews have been
bombarded with -violent images of
rioting t, in the streets of Israel.
Thoughts naturally turn to how
friends and family are faring amid the
turmoil.
For some Israelis, life is relatively
unchanged, while others who live in more
contested regions and closer to Arab
neighbors have some trepi-
dation.
"We can hear the shoot-
ing and the yelling 'Kill the
Jews,"' said David Bitati, of
Migdal Ha'Emek, in the
central Galilee region of
Israel, "We are not afraid,
the police are there and
keeping them away from
Jewish towns."
Bitan, a teacher and bas-
ketball coach, has been

Salient among the voices calling for
unity was that of former Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu. Silent through
the previous week of crisis, he went on
the air Monday night to "offer my sup-
port to the prime minister."
Netanyahu pointedly refused to be
drawn into any criticism of Barak's per-
formance, either on the home front or
when dealing with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu's measured tone contrast-
ed with the sharp criticism of the prime
minister expressed the next day by
Sharon, the leader of the Likud opposi-
tion, who accused Barak of vacillating
when it came to diplomatic efforts and
displaying a lack of resolve in military
matters.
Some observers noted that, despite all
the talk of unity and a unity govern-
ment, Barak is plainly hesitant to take
Sharon into his government. He is, no
doubt, at least partly concerned about

involved for about five years helping to
coordinate the last two teen missions
through the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit's Partnership 2000
program, which links the Detroit Jewish
community to the region socially., eco-
nomically, education'ally and culturally.
Bitan said he wants to visit friends in
nearby Nazareth nit. but the roads are too
dangerous. A Partnership 2000 committee
meeting was cancelled today. [Tuesday]
because of the trouble. The e-mails slimy
support from American friends, and
Federation staff people make him feel
good, "1 feel they are with us," he told the
/eu,'4,-/./ News by phone. 'Ifs so beautiful."
Today is also his seventh wedding
an niversary. He and his wife are deciding
W here to celebrate, he said They can't go
east to Tibericls, because the roads are
closed. Maybe they will head west to a
nice restaurant in Haifa. But they will cel-
ebrate.
"You see, life goes on," he said.

