Assassins kill general who said Palestinian were 'lice'
PHIL REEVES
Independent, 18 October 2001
Jerusalem -- The assassins struck at breakfast time in Jerusalem's Hyatt hotel, a luxurious, honey-coloured complex whose rooms command majestic views of the holy city. The place was a natural choice for a retired army general who held rigid opinions about the ownership of the surrounding landscape.
It lies on the side of Mount Scopus in Arab east Jerusalem, which was illegally occupied and annexed by Israel after the 1967 war. By staying there whenever the Knesset was in session, Rechavam Zeevi - who insisted that the entire city should remain in Israel's hands for ever - was making a heavy-handed political point. Yesterday was supposed to be a big day for the 75-year-old Tourism Minister. The news media was eagerly waiting for him to confirm his resignation - with that of another ultra- nationalist, the infrastructure Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. This was to be the first crack in Ariel Sharon's coalition.
Instead, he became the first cabinet minister to be assassinated by Palestinian guerrillas in the 53-year history of Israel, demolishing tentative moves towards peace and submerging the region in a new crisis.
By the day's end, Israel had frozen all contacts with the Palestinian Authority and was declaring an all-out war on "terrorism", meaning Palestinian guerrilla groups. The fact that Israel's armed forces assassinated two suspected Palestinian militants this week alone did not deter Mr Sharon from portraying his campaign as identical to that of George Bush in the aftermath of the 11 September atrocities.
There was international condemnation yesterday after Mr Zeevi was shot dead by guerrillas at point-blank range. The outrage was not altered by the fact that he was widely acknowledged to have extremist views - including advocating the expulsion of the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
These were reflected in his decision to resign. He was outraged by what he saw as the lenient handling of the Palestinians and alarmed that their government would bow to US pressure and return to the Oslo peace process. Even Mr Sharon has now begun talking airily about a Palestinian state, although one so economically throttled and fractured that the Palestinians are certain to reject it - just as they have before.
As Mr Zeevi was vehemently opposed to withdrawing from the occupied territories, the mere prospect of new negotiations with Yasser Arafat was one that filled him with disgust.
At 7am, Mr Zeevi returned alone to his suite on the Hyatt's 8th floor after breakfast, leaving his wife, Yael, downstairs. Just outside his door, the assassins struck. The gunman - or gunmen - shot him twice in the head and once in the neck, probably using a pistol with a silencer (guests later said they heard only muffled sounds). His wife found him soon afterwards, spreadeagled on his back and bleeding heavily.
"She was screaming and in hysterics," said Dr David Hocking, a Christian tour leader from Orange County, California, who rushed out from his room on the same floor on hearing the commotion. "It was obvious at once that he was dead."
Dr Hocking noticed a small bullet casing - possibly a .38mm, he said - lying at the minister's side. While a tourist tried to revive the general, Israel's security forces began scouring the city's Palestinian areas for the attackers. Shin Bet, the internal security agency, sent its VIP Bodyguard Unit to prevent any other senior politicians from venturing outside unprotected.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - a Marxist- nationalist group committed to forcing Israel out of the occupied territories - claimed responsibility. It said the killing was to avenge the assassination of its 64 -year-old political leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, who was blown to pieces by two Israeli helicopter missiles just over seven weeks ago.
In a video tape circulated to news organisations, three guerrillas parading in red masks before PFLP flags vowed to continue assassinating Israeli officials.
Mr Zeevi was from the outer reaches of the Israel right wing which now dominates the political landscape, the leader of a small hard-right bloc called National Union - Yisrael Beitenu. An outspoken figure - who continued wearing his army tag 25 years after leaving the forces - his overtly racist and bellicose remarks shocked many of his fellow countrymen. He once described Palestinians living and working illegally in Israel as "lice" and a "cancer in our midst".
Yasser Arafat was "Hitler", whom Israel should either deport or assassinate, and whose Palestinian Authority should be dismantled. He was fiercely opposed to attempts from the international community to persuade Israel to moderate its conduct.
In 1991, he caused a scandal by telling a cabinet meeting that President George Bush Snr - then pressing Israel to peace talks by threatening to withhold $ 10bn loan guarantees - was "an enemy of Israel" and America was plotting a second Holocaust. On another occasion, he hurled an anti- Semitic insult at Martin Indyk, a US ambassador to Israel, and challenged him to a fight.
His platform amounted to support for ethnic cleansing: he believed the three million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip should be "transferred" to neighbouring Arab countries.
Yet his death hit Israel like a thunderbolt.
The media filled with warm tributes to the dead minister's courage - he reportedly spurned offers of a bodyguard - and his exotic conduct, which at one stage included him keeping a lion cub. There was a special session to honour him in the Knesset, where a black ribbon was draped across his chair.
Despite his extremist politics, his death was seen by Israelis as an atrocity against one of their founders, a Jerusalem-born military veteran who served in the pre-state Palmach guerrilla force in British- run Palestine, and went on to fight in the 1948-1956 and 1967 wars. After the 1967 war, he was promoted to major general and led the hunt for PLO guerrillas infiltrating into the occupied West Bank from Jordan. From 1974-1977, he was a security and intelligence adviser to Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister at the time.
His career, his record of suppressing Palestinian militants, and many of his political views were close to that of Ariel Sharon, another former general in his 70s. "He was first of all a friend, a comrade, and I shared his belief in the indisputable right of the Jewish people to their historical homeland," said the prime minister.
Afterwards - in another effort to present the US's mission against terror in the same bracket as Israel's war with the Palestinians - Mr Sharon pledged to launch a "war to the finish against the terrorists ... and those who sent them."
Expressions of condemnation from the Palestinian Authority were swept aside as inadequate by Israel. And last night, as Palestinians awaited their punishment, the region had become still more combustible and volatile - at the worst possible moment for the US and its allies.