Arafat's Fatah faction was gunned
down near his West Bank home, and z
Palestinian militia leaders promised to
avenge his death.
Doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem
Hospital, where the Kahane family
was taken, said Binyamin and Talia
Kahane were hit by bullets, and their
children were injured when their car
flipped over into a ditch.
Like his father, Binyamin Kahane
was militantly anti-Arab.
Brooklyn-born Meir Kahane found-
ed the Jewish Defense League and the
Kach movement, which was outlawed
in Israel in 1988 as a racist organiza-
tion. He advocated forcing all Arabs
from the Jewish state. He was assassi-
nated 10 years ago in New York by an
Egyptian-born U.S. citizen.
His son, who ran religious seminar-
ies, founded Kahane Chai — Hebrew
for "Kahane Lives" — which
espoused his father's beliefs. That
movement also was outlawed, in
1992.
A New York native, Binyamin
Kahane lived with his family in the
West Bank settlement of Tapuah.

Pessimistic
About

PEACE
F

❑

Right: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak met with soldiers at the Juwara
base in northern Israel Monday.

Patriarchs, Rachel's Tomb, Joseph's
Tomb in Nablus and the ancient Peace
on Israel synagogue in Jericho — the
latter two defiled and burned by
Palestinian rioters in recent months —
the Orthodox are profoundly ambiva-
lent about the holiest site of all, the
Temple Mount.
This reflects the prohibition in Jewish
law forbidding Jews from setting foot
on the Temple Mount. Jewish law, or
Halachah, regards everyone today as rit-
ually impure and requires a process of
purification that can only be undertak-
en, according to most halachic authori-
ties, when the Temple stands.
The view is not unanimous, however,
and a few Orthodox rabbis contend
that Jews may indeed visit the mount,
avoiding only a particular patch where
it is believed that the Temple's holy ark
once stood.
Still, the mainstream halachic prohi-
bition dovetailed nicely with Israel's
political decision just after the 1967 Six-
Day War to leave civilian control of the
Temple Mount in the hands of the
Muslim religious_trust, and to prohibit
Jewish prayer at the site so as not to
provoke Muslim anger.

Barak this week said he would not
sign the Temple Mount over to the
Palestinians, but left open the possibility
that sovereignty could be transferred to
a third party. Leaders of the religious
Zionist movement, which largely abides
by the halachic prohibition on visiting
the mount, regard Barak's readiness to
bargain over the area as heretical.
The differences within Orthodoxy
were starkly evident this week when reli-
gious Zionist rabbis failed to obtain the
backing of ultra-Orthodox rabbis for a
public campaign against Temple Mount
concessions.
In contrast, non-Orthodox rightists,
whose ties to the holy places are less
religious than historical, national and
emotional, put the Temple Mount at
the top of their loyalties and political
priorities.
Ultimately, Barak believes, Israel's sec-
ular majority will be prepared to forgo
control over the holy sites, including the
Temple Mount, for a peace treaty. Any
such treaty would contain detailed pro-
visions ensuring rights of access and
worship for Jews at these shrines.
However, history raises questions
about the credibility of such provisions.

In 1948, the Israeli-Jordanian
armistice accord provided for Jewish
access to the Western Wall of the
Temple. In practice,. however, Israelis
were flatly barred from praying at the
wall, and Jordanian soldiers and civil-
ians defiled Jewish synagogues and
graves in eastern Jerusalem.
The past three months of Palestinian
violence, replete with acts of wanton
sacrilege against Jewish shrines — and
some reprisals by Jews against former
Muslim mosques inside Israel — have
eroded any confidence Israelis mi ght
have had in the Palestinian commit-
ment to honor such provisions.
Would that lack of trust cause secu-
lar Israelis to oppose a peace accord,
assuming its security-related aspects —
the army's right to overfly Palestinian
areas, to maintain listening posts on
key mountaintops and to deploy tanks
near the Jordan River if threatened
from the east — are satisfactory? That
is difficult to assess.
The perennial tension between reli-
gious and secular in Israel may under-
mine the secular majority's sympathy for
the sensibilities of the religious minority
regarding the holy sites. ❑

ormer University
of Michigan stu-
dents Michael Fox
and Sherry
(Domstein) Fox were
quoted Dec. 22 ("Is
It Safe?," page 26)
about their feeling of
being secure in Tel
Aviv.
On Jan. 2, they e-
mailed friends:
"We were nowhere
near the latest terrorist
attack last night in
Netanya. We actually
went to Jerusalem to
visit a friend of ours
from U-M who was in
town for the week ...
The atmosphere here
is becoming more and
more pessimistic
regarding peace.
"Although most
Israelis want peace
with the Palestinians,
many do not feel that
they are worthy of a
peace treaty at this
time — especially for

the vast concessions

that Israel has laid on
the table in an effort
to negotiate. This is
bad news, since the
upcoming election
seems to come down
to voting for peace
(Barak) or war
(Sharon) — and it is
looking like Ariel
Sharon will win the
election in a land-
slide."
The Foxes, in Israel
since November on a
temporary work
assignment, were
taken to task by some
of their friends for
their glib political
assessment. Michael
Fox offered a more
detailed analysis, but
didn't change his
opinion.
— Alan Hitsky,
Associate Editor

1/5
2001

21

