Israel Weighs Response After 12 Killed in Hebron Ambush

Just Friday morning, a senior Israeli military official said the army had succeeded in securing Hebron and other southern West Bank cities, and as a result was easing restrictions in those areas. "We succeeded to clean these cities of terrorists," he said, referring also to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jericho. He said the army still needed to concentrate on the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin.

Israeli officials immediately labeled Friday night's attack the "Sabbath massacre." The killings evoked a notorious ambush in Hebron in 1980, also on a Sabbath eve, in which six Jews were killed.

Hebron has been a flashpoint for decades. In 1994, a doctor from Qiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, originally of Brooklyn, fired on Muslims at prayer there. He killed 29 and wounded 150 before he was beaten to death.

In 1929, Arab residents of Hebron went on a rampage against the city's small Jewish population, killing dozens. That riot began on a Friday afternoon and lasted into Saturday.

Early today, hours after the attack, officials said the Israeli Army conducted a helicopter raid on Gaza City, striking a metal shop. No injuries were reported.

Friday night's violence, the deadliest Palestinian attack in three weeks, came as Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction was in negotiations with the militant group Hamas to achieve a limited ban on suicide bombing. The ban would apply only to attacks within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, not to attacks on soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But Islamic Jihad has not taken part in the talks, and leaders of the group interviewed Friday night said they rejected any such ban.

"We're going to continue resistance everywhere," Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, a political leader of Islamic Jihad, said by telephone from hiding in the Gaza Strip. "We are not committed to any kind of agreements."

He said of the Hebron attack, "We are congratulating the Islamic world — all Muslims — for such a successful operation."

Even Palestinians who oppose attacks in pre-1967 Israel overwhelmingly support attacks on settlers and soldiers in the West Bank, regarding such violence as lawful resistance to occupation.

Israel does not recognize such distinctions between its citizens on either side of the 1967 boundaries, and, officially, neither do Islamic Jihad nor Hamas, which consider all of Israel as occupied territory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/16/international/middleeast/16MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top