Top Israeli Says Settlers Incited Riot in Hebron

TEL AVIV – A senior Israeli official who witnessed rioting that killed a Palestinian girl in Hebron on Sunday has declared that the violence was not set off by Palestinian stone throwers, as Israeli settlers claimed, but was ''a pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron, with no provocations on the Palestinian side.''

''Dozens of thugs, including youths from Hebron, burst into Arab houses for no reason,'' Moshe Givati, a chief adviser to the government on relations with the settlers, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. The settlers ''broke windows, destroyed property, and threw stones. These people were there for the purpose of making a pogrom.''

This is the first time such charges have been made by a senior military man with pro-settler associations – factors that make the charges difficult for the settlers and their supporters to brush aside.

Givati's report on the riot broke on a day of widespread Palestinian attacks on Israelis: Two brothers were killed near the West Bank town of Ariel; a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a Jerusalem falafel shop, killing himself and wounding six Israelis; and a Palestinian attacker was killed and two Israelis were wounded in another attack on the settlement of Itamar.

Dozens of other attacks by Palestinians in the last week have failed to cause either casualties or significant property damage. Israeli and Palestinian analysts agreed that the large number of unsuccessful attacks was unusual, but differed over the reason.

Palestinians said it was a result of hasty, ill-prepared action by militants competing to avenge the Israeli killing of the Hamas military commander and 17 civilians, most of them children, in Gaza City last Tuesday. Israelis said it was because the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure is staggering due to intense, sustained Israeli actions against it.

Allegations of aggressive, violent behavior by the Hebron settlers have been made before by Palestinians, international observers, and Israeli advocates of conciliation with the Palestinians, but those charges have been fended off by the settlers who argued their critics were anti-Semitic or favored Israeli capitulation to alleged Palestinian terrorists.

But Givati does not appear vulnerable to such accusations. He was the commander of Israeli forces in Hebron during the first Palestinian uprising, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and is so well-respected among the settlers that, six months ago, Public Security Minister Uzi Landau gave him the job of improving relations between settlers and Israeli police.

Directly contradicting settlers' explanations for the rioting, Givati said in the Ha'aretz interview that ''the Palestinians did not throw any rocks or boulders at the funeral procession'' for Elazar Leibovitz, an Israeli army sergeant and Hebron resident killed in a Palestinian ambush on Friday. Givati added that he saw ''at very close range'' that those who attacked the Palestinians carried army-issue weapons and fired sustained bursts at Palestinians' houses.

Givati also said that many of the attackers came from West Bank settlements such as Itamar, the target of a number of recent attacks by Palestinians, including one yesterday. Police said 15 officers were injured in the rioting. Four Israelis have been arrested in connection with those injuries.

David Wilder, spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron, said yesterday that Givati ''has made serious errors in his account of what happened at the funeral'' and insisted that the Hebron settlers were blameless. He said Arabs hurled rocks and metal bars at the funeral procession and then were fired upon by soldiers in Israeli army uniform.

''Of course,'' Wilder said, ''the Hebron Jewish community opposes any and all violence directed against Israeli security forces, be they soldiers or police.''

Israeli police say they are regularly attacked verbally, and sometimes physically, by the Hebron settlers as they attempt to maintain civil order in the divided city, where fewer than 1,000 settlers – protected by large army forces – live amid 150,000 Palestinians.

Foreigners and journalists have been stoned, kicked, and verbally harassed as well. Local television reporters have filmed settlers, under army protection, taunting Palestinians, stoning their homes, and shooting holes in their water tanks.

Eran Lerman, who retired last year as Israel's deputy chief of intelligence, said the situation in Hebron is ''shocking. ... These people are deliberately provoking confrontation and crisis while they shelter behind an army whose mission they refuse to facilitate.''

A Palestinian suicide bomber struck yesterday for the first time since June 18, when a bomber detonated himself on a bus during rush-hour, killing 19 people and setting the stage for Israel's reoccupation of many Palestinian autonomous areas in the West Bank.

Yesterday's bomber, a 17-year-old Muslim resident of the predominantly Christian community of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, killed only himself. Six Israelis were injured, none critically, when the bomber attempted to dash into a fast-food shop on the Street of the Prophets in West Jerusalem after he was spotted by a police patrol.

Also yesterday, two brothers who lived in an Israeli settlement in the northern West Bank were shot dead in a factory in the Palestinian town of Jama'in, where they had apparently gone on business.

And in the Itamar settlement, scene of two other recent attacks, an Israeli couple were injured by a knife-wielding Palestinian who entered their home in the early morning hours. The Palestinian severely injured the husband, but was fought to a standstill by the wife until soldiers arrived and killed him.

Lerman, the former deputy chief of intelligence, said Palestinian attacks have become less effective recently because tough Israeli operations in the West Bank and Gaza have produced better information on Palestinian militants' activities and have ''devastated their command structure.''

He said Israel's contention that there was a need to attack the terrorist infrastructure to reduce the ability of extremists to transport suicide bombers and shooters to their targets has proved valid.

''What they are doing now is not of the quality that it was in the past,'' Lerman said.

Khaled al-Batsch, a leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, said that because of the magnitude of civilian casualties when Israel killed Hamas military leader Salah Shehadeh ''all the Palestinian factions want to respond, and they are trying to do it quickly. This creates confusion. Some of them don't do preparations properly.''

While acknowledging the reduced effectiveness of the Palestinian attacks, Batsch said this ''is not an indication of the weakness or strength of any group, but an indication of their hastiness in trying to act.''