[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 18, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
YASSER ARAFAT
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have informed the managers of my
interest in speaking for just a few moments on a matter of substantial
importance. I shall be brief because I know the managers want to
proceed with the bill.
I want to call my colleagues' attention to a tape recording of PLO
Chief Yasser Arafat urging a holy war on Jerusalem which poses a clear
and present danger of additional violence, notwithstanding the
commitments of the PLO and Arafat in the Israeli-PLO accord and which
threatens peace in the Mideast.
This is a matter that the Congress of the United States and the
Senate of the United States and really all Americans are going to have
to be concerned about in light of what is happening in the Mideast and
in light of the very substantial commitments which the Israelis have
made in the Israeli-PLO accord and which the United States has made in
backing up that accord.
We are going to have to be insistent and make no mistake about our
demands that the commitments of the PLO be maintained. What has
apparently happened here, from all the news reports, is that when
Arafat was in Johannesburg attending the inauguration of President
Nelson Mandela, he was speaking in a mosque where they could not
understand Arabic. Arafat spoke in English and talked about a jihad or
a holy war in order to retake Jerusalem. And now Arafat apparently in
Oslo today has said that the jihad, which is the word for a holy war,
was really meant to be an effort to peacefully take Jerusalem.
Mr. President, that simply does not wash. You have a very volatile
situation in the Mideast at the present time.
In an extensive article in today's New York Times which cites the
violence, there is the report of the shooting to death of two Israeli
settlers by Islamic militants just south of the West Bank town of
Hebron. There is a reference in this article to the at-risk position of
some 5,000 Israeli settlers on the Gaza Strip, and a citation and the
reference here to some 130,000 settlers in Israeli-held territory which
will be turned over to the PLO, and an especially high-risk situation
for some 450 settlers referred to in this perennial flash point where
religious and nationalistic feelings are especially intense.
The mayor of Jerusalem, Mayor Ehud Olmert, has called upon Arafat for
a specific apology and for a specific declaration that the PLO will be
following and observing their commitments under the Israeli-PLO accord.
Mr. President, there has been very substantial evidence of violations
by the PLO. They have been logged by the Zionist Organization of
America, by the national president, Mr. Morton A. Klein, a very
distinguished Philadelphian who brings these matters to my attention
with regularity, and to others in this body. And I, in turn, bring
these matters to the attention of my colleagues.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my
comments a full statement of the Associated Press dispatch from May 17
be printed in the Congressional Record which recites the background of
the tape recording of Arafat's call for a holy war; that the summary of
the ZOA reports on violations for the week of May 4 through May 11 and
the week of May 11 through May 18 be included in the Record, together
with the article from the New York Times from today, May 18, which sets
forth in some detail the background of what will enable me to
abbreviate my comments at the present time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, there is a somewhat longer article which
appears in today's Wall Street Journal which details the background of
the controversy over the holy sites and sets forth in some detail the
concerns of Jerusalem's Mayor Ehud Olmert about Arafat's vow to pray in
Jerusalem, which is a matter of some historical importance, and puts in
perspective the current controversy.
I ask unanimous consent that be printed in the Record at the
conclusion of my remarks as well.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 2.)
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, in essence, we are facing a situation of
tremendous tension. I am concerned about it as a U.S. Senator. I am
concerned about it also in terms of the reports which I have received a
few months ago from relatives who live in Jerusalem. Within the past
hour and a half I talked to my sister, Hilda Specter Morgenstern and
her husband, Arthur Morgenstern, who relate to me the on-the-spot
concerns in Jerusalem about what is happening.
It was a historic moment when President Clinton--and I again
compliment him for what he did on September 13 of last year in bringing
together Arafat and Rabin on the White House lawn. It was a moment for
me of some mixed emotions seeing Arafat honored at the White House of
the United States of America after his long, notorious record for
terrorism, including the murder of the U.S. Charge d'Affaires in 1974,
and for the PLO's complicity, and Arafat's personal complicity, for the
murder of Mr. Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro and for what has
happened.
But when the Israelis and Prime Minister Rabin are willing to make
this arrangement, it seems to me the United States ought to be
supportive. But when these acts of violence continue, and when Arafat,
the signatory to these arrangements, who has made the promises all
around the world, promises which I heard personally when a good many
Senators had a chance to meet with Arafat, it seems to me that this is
something which the Senate has to focus on, the Congress has to focus
on, and America has to focus on to see to it that these commitments
that Arafat has made are lived up to; and that we not permit him to
talk where he thinks he is off the record, talking secretly and talking
about the jihad, a holy war, and we have to insist that those
commitments be maintained.
I thank my colleagues for these few moments.
I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
[From the Wall Street Journal, May 18, 1994]
Despite Peace Pact, Jerusalem's Holy Sites Keep Passions Burning
(By Peter Waldman)
Jerusalem.--In a few weeks, shortly after he settles into
his new home in Jericho, Yasser Arafat hopes to make the 30-
minute drive through the Judean hills to pray here at the al-
Aqsa mosque.
Ehud Olmert, Jerusalem's mayor, has vowed to rally 500,000
Jews to stop him. Bloodshed from an Arafat pilgrimage, the
mayor has predicted, will cause ``10 times'' more victims
than February's Hebron massacre, in which a Jewish extremist
killed 30 Palestinians.
With the signing of the Gaza-Jericho peace pact in Cairo,
the Israeli and Palestinian haggling over postage stamps and
passports is nearly finished for now. But as the pique over
Mr. Arafat's proposed pilgrimage to Jerusalem suggests, the
most volatile issues between Muslim and Jew remain far from
resolved. Chief among them is the abiding dispute over the
spot here known to Jews as the Temple Mount. The ancient
stone plaza, where King Solomon's temple once stood, holds
the Aqsa mosque and the gold-plated Dome of the Rock, Islam's
third-holiest shrine.
age-old conflict
As Mr. Arafat and the PLO edge ever closer to Jerusalem,
this age-old conflict is only getting more explosive.
``In very, very sanguine terms,'' says Joel Lerner, an
Israeli and self-described freelance scholar, ``if the Hebron
incident derailed the peace process for a month, a vaguely
similar operation on the Temple Mount would derail it
forever.''
Mr. Lerner, an Orthodox Jew from New York, ought to know.
He has spent six of the past 20 years in Israeli prisons for
conspiring to blow up the Dome of the Rock and for plotting a
religious coup against the Israeli government.
As hard as the peace negotiators have tried, the scared and
the secular cannot be separated in the holy land. In Yasser
Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the PLO and Israel have come close.
Both leaders are pragmatic centrists who have long eschewed
religious zealotry. But their peace treaty, based on their
common secular ground and focusing on things like police
powers, education and taxes, necessarily skirts the religious
heart of the conflict: Who, in the end, will rule the holy
sites in Jerusalem? Until that dispute is resolved,
coexistence will remain dicey.
In the Cairo agreement, ``Religious Affairs'' are relegated
to item No. 15 in a 38-point list of powers being transferred
to the Palestinians. The accord pledges free access to all
religious sites in the PLO's domain. Beyond that, it
preserves Israeli control over an ancient synagogue in
Jericho, and grants Palestinians power over a 13th-century
mosque near Jericho where Muslims believe Moses is buried.
Finally, on at least three occasions a year, it gives
pilgrims the right to visit, ``under the Palestinian flag,''
the site called al-Maghtas on the Jordan River, the spot
where John the Baptist is believed to have baptized Jesus.
The accord doesn't mention Jerusalem or its sacred sites--
dilemmas that the PLO and Israel have agreed to postpone
until ``final-status negotiations'' begin in two years.
Despite Mr. Arafat's often-expressed desire to pray at the
Aqsa mosque, Oded Ben-Ami, a spokesman for Prime Minister
Rabin, says the PLO leader has not raised the issue of a
visit and that, for the moment, such a pilgrimage remains
``hypothetical.''
Still, swords have already been drawn. In an overpowering
image of where Mr. Arafat believes he is heading, a massive
color photograph of the Dome of the Rock papers the wall
behind his desk in Tunis. Jordan's King Hussein, who has
never renounced custody of the Jerusalem shrines since losing
them in the 1967 war, has commissioned archaeologists to
prove Jerusalem was an Arab city before Jews settled here
3,000 years ago. And in his cave-like office beneath the Dome
of the Rock, Sheik Mohammed Said al-Jamel, the cleric in
charge, heaps scorn on Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.
``All that they believe is superstition,'' he says.
Nor are militant Jews watching all this from the sidelines.
Since the Hebron massacre, police have detained a dozen or so
alleged Jewish extremists without charges, and revoked the
gun permits of some 50 others. But these people comprise just
a small fraction of the thousands of ardent, messianic Jews
living in Israel and the occupied territories.
For the messianists, the creation of the state of Israel in
1948 and its expansion to its biblical borders in 1967 began
nothing less than a process of divine redemption that must
now continue at all costs.
The heart and soul of messianic Judaism is the 3,000-year-
old Temple Mount, or what Muslims call in Arabic al Haram
ash Sharif. The tree-lined rectangular area, roughly the
size of three football fields, is so hotly contested by
Muslims and Jews that no Israeli government, since
capturing the site in 1967, has had the nerve to seize it
from its Muslim administrators.
To messianic Jews, continued Muslim control of the Temple
Mount constitutes an insufferable indignity.
``Until the holy of holies is under our sovereignty, it
means we're still living in the Diaspora,'' say Rabbi Shlomo
Goren, one of Israel's pre-eminent religious figures and the
army rabbi who blew the shofar, or ram's horn, when Israeli
troops captured the Temple Mount in 1967. ``It means we are
not yet living in a Jewish state.''
Jews believe the Temple Mount is where Abraham bound his
son Isaac for sacrifice, where Solomon erected the so-called
First Temple for prayer and animal offerings, and where it
was later rebuilt by Herod the Great.
After the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 A.D.,
Jews have longed to rebuild a third one. Many messianic Jews
believe a third temple is a prerequisite for the coming of
the Messiah.
``Since the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, it's as if
Judaism has had its heart extracted and is living on borrowed
time,'' says Mr. Lerner.
There is one big problem: For the past 1,200 years, the
Temple Mount has been the foundation of the Aqsa mosque and
the Dome of the Rock, which covers the spot from where
Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven on a staircase of
light. Jews haven't been allowed to pray regularly at the
site for at least a millennium.
That is why Mr. Arafat's plans to pray on the Temple Mount
pose such an affront to many Jews today. Not only does the
PLO leader remain reviled in Israel for directing terrorism
against the Jewish state, but equally important, his claim to
Jerusalem threatens to interfere with Jewish destiny,
messianic Jews believe. Jerusalem's Mayor Olmert recently
expressed this fear in a different way to the Jerusalem
Report magazine, warning that if Mr. Arafat ascends the
Temple Mount to pray, he will declare a Palestinian state and
never leave.
To counterattack, militant Jews have embarked on a campaign
to get Muslims off the Temple Mount once and for all.
``We are living at a time when God is correcting the
mistakes of history,'' says Gershon Salomon, a history
professor and leader of Temple Mount Faithful, a Jewish group
dedicated to wresting control of the sacred site. ``Al-Aqsa
and the Dome of the Rock must be removed back to Mecca, the
place from where they came. We will rebuild them stone by
stone. We have the means to do it.''
Though the Temple Mount has become a lightning rod for
Jewish extremists, most less-religious Jews--inside and
outside Israel--don't give the sacred site much thought these
days. The Reform movement's prayer book doesn't even mention
the ancient temple rituals, although nearly one-quarter of
the Torah's 613 laws deal with the temple's animal
sacrifices, writes Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in his book,
``Jewish Literacy.'' The Conservative denomination's
prayer book celebrates the temple cult as part of ancient
Judaism, but expresses no desire to reinstate it.
Only Orthodox Jews continue to pray regularly for the
rebuilding of the temple and for animal sacrifices to be
offered there again. But even many of these observant Jews
find the prospect of reviving animal offerings, on the eve of
the 21st century, a bit far-fetched.
``It would be hard for me, as a mainstream Orthodox rabbi,
to assume that if the temple was rebuilt, we'd pick up where
we were 2,000 years ago,'' says Rabbi Michah Halpern, a
historian in Jerusalem. Rather, he says, it is the act of
``yearning'' for the third temple and the Messiah that
counts. ``We are not involved in the actual building
processes themselves,'' he says.
This modern reticence made it easy for then-Israeli Defense
Minister Moshe Dayan, shortly after Israel's 1967 victory, to
return control of the Temple Mount to its Jordanian-run
Islamic board, called the waqf. At the time, many rabbis were
warning Jews to stay off the Temple Mount anyway, lest they
commit the ``arrogance of arrogance'' of treading on the
``holy of holies,'' where in ancient times only the high
priest was allowed to go. (Nobody knows precisely where the
hollowed ground lies.) The waqf took back the keys; few Jews
complained.
But over the years, Temple Mount experts, including Rabbi
Goren, published diagrams of the ancient site showing the
many areas where Jews could safely roam. The messianists,
whose numbers have steadily grown since 1967, had their
calling: Take back the Temple Mount.
Small groups sprang up to lead Jewish worshipers on to the
mount in defiance of the waqf. Israeli police had to seal off
ancient tunnels discovered under the site to foil Jewish
efforts to raze the Muslim shrines. Nearby, a yeshiva, a
religious school, was founded to train future priests for
duties in a rebuilt temple. And the Temple Institute, funded
in part by the Israeli government, reproduced all the
necessary biblical trappings--from sacrificial urns and
altars to priestly vestments and breastplates--to perform the
temple rituals again. Suddenly, Jews, who had waited
millenniums to restore the temple, were beginning the process
themselves.
``When you say the Messiah will rebuild the temple later
on,'' says the institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman, ``you're
basically shirking the responsibility yourself.''
The temple cause spread to non-Jews as well. In Canton,
Miss., a Christian preacher and cattle breeder named Clyde
Lott, after reading Genesis one night, contacted his state's
trade office to find out if Israel had the red cows it would
need to perform proper, biblical purification rites in a
third temple. It didn't. Over the past five years, Mr. Lott,
working with the Temple Institute and some American Christian
backers, has developed a breed of red cow that he hopes
will spawn ``the livestock restoration'' of Israel, he
says. The first shipment of 500 cows is due to arrive in
Israel in November.
The temple's messianic calling dove-tailed with the calling
of another group of zealots: Israel's few-thousand unalloyed,
anti-Arab fanatics. Today, the prospect of Mr. Arafat moving
to Jericho and praying in Jerusalem has made these people
more agitated than ever.
``Zionism and Arab nationalism are diametrically opposed;
you can't wish that away,'' says Israel ``Keith'' Fuchs, co-
founder of the Temple Mount Yeshiva, a militant Jewish school
which recently had to shut down after both its top rabbis
were detained by police. Mr. Fuchs, 30, has been in and out
of police custody since he was 16. He and his Temple Mount
cohorts provide a telling picture of the passions, and
dangers, looming ahead.
For Mr. Fuchs, it all started in Santa Monica, Calif., he
says, where his family moved from Brooklyn in 1978. One
afternoon, another child kicked his little sister and called
her ``a Jew bitch.'' Soon after, Mr. Fuchs joined militant
Rabbi Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League, and was arrested
several times for fighting with American Muslims and neo-
Nazis. He moved to Israel in 1982, only to serve 22 months in
prison for shooting up an Arab bus near Hebron. Later, he was
investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but
never charged, in connection with several bombings in the
U.S., including the deaths of an Arab-American activist and a
suspected Nazi war criminal.
Last fall, Mr. Fuchs helped start the Temple Mount Yeshiva
with Rabbi Avraham Toledano, a former leader of the late
Rabbi Kahane's Kach party. Rabbi Toledano was arrested at the
Tel Aviv airport in November with weapons, bomb-making gear
and $50,000 in cash in his luggage. A third yeshiva founder,
Baruch Ben-Yosef, born Andy Green in Brooklyn, was detained
without charges in March. A long-ball hitter in the Jerusalem
softball league, Mr. Ben-Yosef, 35, has served several prison
terms for attempting to bomb Arab targets, including the Dome
of the Rock.
Their yeshiva attracted a mix of a dozen or so veteran
messianists and spiritual seekers, most drawn to it by the
doting charm of Mr. Ben-Yosef.
On their daily trips to the Temple Mount, the yeshiva
students were kept from praying by Israeli police. But they
were allowed to march around the plaza, shadowed by waqf
guards, who radioed for reinforcements whenever prayer was
suspected. A student was once hauled off for rubbing his
eyes, a gesture of worship, the guards said. This spring, the
yeshiva had planned a guerrilla sacrifice of a lamb on the
Temple Mount for Passover, which would have been the first
real Passover lamb in 2,000 years, students claim. But those
plans, like the yeshiva itself, fell apart after Mr. Ben-
Yosef's arrest.
Now, the students are moving on to other activities. Mr.
Fuchs, the former JDL activist, has retreated to his
computer-graphics company in Jerusalem, though he still
carries a concealed pistol--with a permit--under his jacket.
Daniel Leubitz, 19, is going home to Cleveland to start a
local JDL chapter to combat ``black anti-Semitism,'' he says.
``We've spent many dollars on the phone'' from Cleveland,
says Mr. Leubitz's worried mother, Amalia, ``reminding Dan
that Abraham had doors on all sides of his tent to welcome
all people.''
To Sean Casper, chairman of the Movement to Rebuild the
Third Temple, the ``mindboggling'' thing isn't that Mr.
Arafat may soon pray on the Temple Mount but that Israel may
let him. ``This country has never had a problem doing what it
wants to do,'' he says. ``Our problem is we don't know what
we want.''
Mr. Casper, a lawyer who represents several of the Jewish
militants in detention, doesn't think it would take much to
shake things up. ``It would be easier to blow up al-Aqsa than
it was to kill 30 people in the Hebron mosque,'' he says.
``If I wanted to, I could do it myself.''
____
Exhibit 2
[From the New York Times International, May 18, 1994]
Islamic Militants Slay 2 Settlers in Hebron
(By Clyde Haberman)
Hebron, Israeli-Occupied West Bank.--Two Israeli settlers
were shot to death today by Islamic militants just south of
this West Bank town, and Israel's army commander warned that
the violence might be a foretaste of what settlements would
face under Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip.
The question of what, if anything, to do about Jewish
settlements in Gaza and the West Bank has been relatively
muted lately.
But the killings today, which followed clashes in Hebron on
Monday that left at least a dozen Palestinians wounded by
settlers and soldiers, made clear that the issue is very much
alive and is a factor in the success or failure of the
exercise in Palestinian self-government that has begun in
Gaza and Jericho.
doubts about the accord
Settlers and other Israelis who question Israel's wisdom in
signing the self-rule agreement with the Palestine Liberation
Organization are likely to have deeper doubts after the
attack today. Two Jews were killed and a third seriously
wounded in the head in an ambush as they drove south of
Hebron, an area still under Israeli control. An armed wing of
the Hamas group of Islamic militants claimed responsibility.
Later, the army chief of staff, Lieut. Gen. Ehud Barak,
cautioned that the attack today was probably not the last,
either in the West Bank or in Gaza.
His remarks were significant because security for roughly
5,000 Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip--most in a cluster
of outposts known as Gush Qatif, along the Mediterranean
coast--is a basic component of the Israeli-P.L.O. agreement.
For many Israelis, a critical test of the accord is whether
those settlers stay safe on their islands in a sea of
hostility. They were unlikely to be reassured after hearing
General Barak say today, ``I don't rule out terrorist attacks
on the roads to Gush Qatif.''
While Israeli forces are largely pulling out of Gaza, they
will remain at border crossings and in newly created buffer
zones around the settlements, patrolling roads with
Palestinian police officers to assure that Jews there move
safely between their homes and Israel.
The troop withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, under way in
earnest for a week, may be completed on Wednesday. Today, the
Israelis formally handed over civil authority in Gaza to the
Palestinians, as they did in Jericho on Friday, but a
government is not yet in place, and so no real changes in
daily life are expected right away.
For Palestinians, the fighting in Hebron on Monday,
rekindled their calls for removing the estimated 130,000
settlers in Israeli-held territories, especially the 450 in
this perennial flash point, where religious and nationalist
feelings are intense.
The settlements are such a delicate issue that negotiations
on their fate have been delayed by Israel and the P.L.O.--
presumably for at least two years, although under their
agreement the matter could be raised at any point.
But the question clearly will not go away. That was
guaranteed by the Hebron massacre on Feb. 25, when a settler
killed at least 29 Palestinians at prayer. After that,
Israeli Cabinet ministers said they were ready to evict the
Jews from Hebron for security reasons. But Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, while unsympathetic to the Hebron settlers,
insisted that the issue was not now on his agenda.
Although the matter then receded from public attention, its
immediacy was reaffirmed when a group of armed settlers here
walked to a religious site on Monday, the Jewish holiday of
Shabuoth, and got into an argument with Arabs near a mosque.
What happened is not clear. The Jews say that the Arabs
threw stones and that they fired their guns in self-
protection. Arabs say that the Jews attacked first and that
only then did they respond with rocks.
Either way, the incident reignited a town that does not
need much to throw it into turmoil. At least a dozen and
perhaps as many as 18 Palestinians were shot in the fighting,
both by settlers and by Israeli soldiers who showed up and
become embroiled in their own clashes with the Arabs.
At a weekly meeting today, some Cabinet ministers accused
the settlers of having been provocative with their Monday
walk through town, which army officers said had not been
coordinated with them in advance, as required.
The Israeli radio quoted Mr. Rabin as having called the
settlers' actions unjustified, and other officers were
troubled by reports that the Hebron Jews, after hearing about
the killings today, walked through the main Palestinian
market, overturning stands and destroying merchandise.
sharon defends settlers
Hebron's Mayor, Mustafa Natshe, called the settlers
``detonators'' ready to explode, and demanded that they be
removed. But Ariel Sharon, the former Defense Minister,
defended the right of Jews to be in Hebron and to defend
themselves when attacked. ``What are you expecting--that they
should step quietly, or maybe that they should run away?'' he
said.
In the hope of reducing tensions, at least for now, the
army sealed off Hebron to outsiders and put the town under
curfew. Among those under restrictions were the 160 members
of an observer force of Norwegians, Danes and Italians that
was created after the massacre, ostensibly to protect local
residents and help keep the town calm.
But the clashes on Monday underscored how limited in power
this force is. Its members carry no weapons, they have no
police function sand if the Israeli Army restricts their
movements--as it did on Monday and today--there is not much
for them to do except to file reports to an Israeli-
Palestinian committee and to their governments.
``We're just sitting in our foxholes,'' said Bjarno
Sorensen, a spokesman for the force. The situation was ``a
little bit frustrating,'' he acknowledged, but he said the
monitors hoped ``to be on the move again soon.''
____
Arafat Call for Jihad Could Threaten Peace Accord
Jerusalem.--A tape recording of PLO chief Yasser Arafat
urging a ``holy war'' for Jerusalem could stall progress
towards full Palestinian autonomy, Prime Minister Yatzhak
Rabin said Tuesday.
The tape was played by Israel radio which said it received
Arafat's May 10th speech at a mosque in Johannesburg from the
South African Jewish community.
``You have to understand our main battle isn't how much we
can achieve from them here or there. Our main battle is
Jerusalem,'' Arafat said.
He added that Israel had promised in a letter that
Jerusalem could be discussed three years from now, when
negotiations begin over a permanent settlement.
``You have to come and to fight and to start a Jihad to
liberate Jerusalem, the historical shrine. And this is very
important,'' Arafat said.
Rabin said Arafat's comments violated the peace agreement
signed in Cairo on May 4 that led to the implementation of
autonomy.
``If he indeed called for a Jihad this is a grave violation
to what he committed himself to in the letter to me he wrote
and signed that led to the mutual recognition of Israel and
the PLO,'' Rabin said.
``If this is indeed his call it will put into question the
continuation of the process between us and the Palestinians.
We will not be able to accept a violation of a PLO commitment
not to be involved in violence and terror,'' he added.
Rabin added that Israel, in its accord with the PLO, agreed
the issue of Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims,
could be raised when negotiations on a permanent settlement
began.
Israel captured the Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem from
Jordan during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it as
part of its capital. The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as
capital of their would-be state.
Rabin has repeatedly said that Jerusalem is not up for
negotiation. On the question of Jerusalem, unlike the West
Bank or Gaza Strip, Israelis are almost unanimous in opposing
any territorial compromise.
Still fresh in their minds is pre-1967 Israel, when
Jordanians banned Jews from their most holy site, the Western
Wall.
Following the broadcast of Arafat's comments, the right-
wing National Religious Party tabled a no-confidence motion
in Parliament. Opposition parties demanded that the
government release all secret annexes to its May 4th autonomy
agreement with the PLO.
Rabin has denied any secret agreements.
Members of Rabin's Labor party faction in Parliament also
protested Arafat's comments and demanded a government
response.
``If such things were really said, believe me, there will
be a very determined and aggressive response,'' Police
Minister Moshe Shahal said.
Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur said that Arafat's
comments could stem from the staunch opposition he faces on
the Palestinian front but added that Israel would not allow
the PLO chief to damage its credibility.
Uri Dromi, head of the Government Press Office, said he
hoped Arafat would deny what ``he allegedly said in the
mosque'' to allow the peace process to go forward.
``Up until now we have reason to be optimistic about the
smooth transfer of authority and we hope that statements or
expressions like he allegedly said in the mosque will not
undermine the peace process,'' Dromi said.
____
Zionist Organization of America,
New York, NY, May 12, 1994.
To: Senator Arlen Specter
From: Morton A. Klein, National President, Zionist
Organization of America.
1. May 10, 1994: Arab terrorists fired at least 10 shots
into an Israeli civilian bus near the Arab village of Mezrat-
Asharkia, in the administered territories. Three passengers
were wounded by the gunfire. The Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction of the PLO, claimed
responsibility for the attack.* Yasser Arafat has neither
condemned the attack, nor taken any steps to ``discipline''
the PFLP.
2. May 4-11, 1994: Yasser Arafat gave no speeches
encouraging the Palestinian Arabs to refrain from violence.
3. May 4-11, 1994: Yasser Arafat did not convene the
Palestine National Council to delete those clauses in the
Palestine National Covenant that call for the destruction of
Israel.
____
Zionist Organization of America,
New York, NY. May 18, 1994.
To: Senator Arlen Specter,
From: Morton A. Klein, National President, Zionist
Organization of America.
1. May 12, 1994: Arab terrorists shot at an Israeli truck
driver near the Israeli town of Mogaz, in the Gaza Strip. The
driver was wounded. Hamas, a non-PLO group, claimed
responsibility for the attack.
Yasser Arafat did not condemn the attack.
2. May 12, 1994: Arab terrorists shot at Israeli soldiers
near the Jabaliya refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip. None of
the soldiers were wounded; when the Israelis returned fire,
one of the terrorists was wounded. Responsibility for the
attack was not immediately determined.
Yasser Arafat did not condemn the attack.
3. May 15, 1994: Arab terrorists in a van opened fire at
Israeli bystanders were wounded. Hamas, a non-PLO group,
claimed responsibility for the attack. Yasser Arafat did not
condemn the attack.
4. May 17, 1994: Arab terrorists shot at an Israeli
civilian auto travelling south of Hebron. Two Israelis were
killed, and a third was seriously wounded. Hamas, a non-PLO
group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Yasser Arafat did not condemn the attack.
5. May 17, 1994: Israel Radio played a tape recording of a
speech by Yasser Arafat in a mosque in Johannesburg, South
Africa, on May 10, 1994, in which Arafat urged Arabs to
launch a ``holy war'' to conquer Jerusalem.
6. May 11-18, 1994: Yasser Arafat gave no speeches
encouraging the Palestinian Arabs to refrain from violence.
7. May 11-18, 1994: Yasser Arafat did not convene the
Palestine National Council to delete those clauses in the
Palestine National Covenant that call for the destruction of
Israel.
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