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October 13, 2000/14 Tishri 5761, Vol. 53, No.3
Barak challenged to get tougher as violence continues
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - As leaders of the world community try to bring the Middle East back from the brink of war, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is facing a mounting political challenge to get tougher with the Arabs both inside and outside Israel.
Despite the intermittent violence that continued in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it was the deadly Arab-on-Jew and Jew-on-Arab violence within the country that sent shock waves through Israelis as they tuned in to the news after Yom Kippur ended the night of Oct. 9.
The Cabinet, in an emergency session through much of the night Oct. 9, issued a somber statement deploring the violence involving the state's majority Jewish and minority Arab populations.
Barak told the nation at dawn Oct. 10 that each citizen, Jew and Arab alike, shared responsibility for preserving the delicate Jewish-Arab relationship built up painstakingly over the five decades of the state's existence.
The death toll among Israeli Arabs since the unrest began in late September rose to at least 13 over Yom Kippur with the shooting in Nazareth of two Arab men on the eve of the solemn holiday.
Three others were seriously wounded by gunshots fired in the city that has Israel's largest Arab population.
Israeli Arab leaders blamed police for the shootings, but police said the fatal shots were most likely fired by civilians.
It soon became clear, however, that the violence in Nazareth was not an isolated incident. Instead, it was the worst of a series of events that had Arabs attacking Jewish cars and property, and Jewish vigilantes attacking Arabs and Arab property around the country.
One day after Palestinian mobs destroyed the Jewish holy site of Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus, Jewish mobs attacked an old mosque in downtown Tiberias.
The violence continued with arson attacks on synagogues in Jaffa and Ramla, and Jewish looting of Arab shops in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and other towns.
Israel's Army Radio said the scenes of violence the night of Oct. 9 looked like "civil war."
Even within Barak's own coalition, there has been increasingly strident criticism against the police for acting too forcefully against Israeli Arab rioters.
And the violence within Israel's borders has become the subject of debate among the nation's politicians.
Salient among the voices calling for unity was that of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Silent through the previous week of crisis, he went on the air the night of Oct. 9 to "offer my support to the prime minister."
Netanyahu's measured tone contrasted with the sharp criticism of the prime minister expressed the next day by the leader of the Likud opposition, Ariel Sharon.
On Oct. 10, Sharon accused Barak of vacillating when it came to diplomatic efforts and displaying a lack of resolve in military matters.
For his part, Sharon has been stridently defending Alec Ron, the commander of the northern district of Israel's police force.
Ron has been criticized by the Israeli Arab community, and by the left of the political spectrum, for his handling of the confrontations involving that community.
Barak, however, said that Ron was acting under orders and the entire police force deserved the nation's support at this difficult time.
Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg called Tuesday for new orders to be issued to the police to prevent them from making an immediate use of firepower.
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