Word: settlers
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...Afula. The killer, a member of the anti-Arafat Islamic movement Hamas, detonated his car bomb alongside an Israeli bus as passengers, many of them teenagers, were boarding. Hamas promised that the attack would be the first of five in retaliation for February's rampage by an Israeli settler at the mosque in Hebron. On Thursday, a Palestinian gunman from the Islamic Jihad group shot an Israeli dead and wounded four others near the southern town of Ashdod. Following a speech in Hebron by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Friday, the I.D.F. shot eight Palestinians with live and rubber bullets...
...many citizens, the most dismaying revelation came at the beginning of the hearings from Deputy Commander Meir Tayar, who heads the paramilitary border police unit in Hebron. Standing orders, he said, forbade security forces from firing on Jewish settlers under any circumstances. He explained that if a settler opened fire, instructions were to "take cover and wait for the clip to finish, then stop him in some other way, not by shooting...
Tragic but simple: that was Israel's official characterization of last month's massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron. The killer, a Jewish settler, was portrayed as a singular lunatic acting alone. The episode, it was said, could not have been foreseen or prevented, and Israeli security forces responded properly. But after two weeks of hearings by a state commission examining the slaughter, it does not look so elementary anymore. Baruch Goldstein, the Hebron triggerman, is no longer the sole subject of suspicion, now that witnesses say a second man may have been involved. More broadly, an entire national mind...
Many Israelis were worrying almost as much about their country's behavior. Testimony has pointed to considerable official negligence. Security procedures were surprisingly lax at a shrine that has been a notorious flash point for tensions. Authorities did not take seriously the threat of settler mayhem, although warning signs were plentiful. And many were asking whether the security forces overreacted in the aftermath of the massacre. Before it is even completed, the inquiry is raising the specter of high-level resignations...
During an official Israeli inquiry, the regional commander in charge of West Bank forces said Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein's killing spree in the Tomb of the Patriarchs could have been prevented. Five of the six men who were supposed to be on guard inside the mosque -- including three who overslept -- were missing.A police superintendent testified that Israeli security forces were forbidden to fire on Jewish settlers, even if the settlers were shooting Palestinians. In that case, he said, "you take cover and wait for the clip to finish, then stop him in some other way, not by shooting...