X-URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6619-2001Oct17.html
Israel's Tourism Minister Assassinated
Militant Palestinian Group Claims Responsibility for Death of Rightist
Politician
By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 17, 2001; 4:01 PM
JERUSALEM, Oct. 17 Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, an extreme
rightist who favored forcing millions of Arabs to leave Israel and
Israeli-occupied territories, was shot to death outside his hotel room
today by at least one Palestinian assassin. It was the first murder of
an Israel cabinet minister by Palestinians in the Jewish state's
52-year history.
The militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took
responsibility for the murder, which it said was to avenge Israel's
assassination of its own leader, Mustafa Zibri, on Aug. 27.
In an emergency session of the Israeli cabinet, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon told government ministers that Zeevi's murder means "a new era
has begun," suggesting an extraordinarily harsh military response
would be forthcoming. Sharon blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
for the assassination, which several Israeli ministers likened to the
Sept. 11 suicide airplane attacks in America.
"We will wage all-out war on the terrorists, those who collaborate
with them and those who send them," Sharon told a hastily convened
special session of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in which Zeevi's
empty chair was covered by a black sash. "His legacy we will fulfill.
May God avenge his blood."
A meeting of Sharon's security cabinet, a select group of top-ranking
ministers, was scheduled for this evening to formulate Israel's next
step. A state funeral was scheduled for Wednesday.
Arafat's Palestinian Authority condemned the murder, but said Sharon
himself was to blame for having intensified Israel's own policy of
assassinating Palestinian militants and political leaders. Israeli
Radio reported that Arafat's security forces had arrested a
high-ranking member of the PFLP in the West Bank, perhaps seeking to
forestall an Israeli attack. Palestinian officials could not
immediately confirm the arrest.
"Every time an incident like this occurs, Israel holds the Palestinian
Authority responsible," said Jamil Tarifi, a Palestinian minister. "It
should be understood that the continuation of Israel's policy of
assassinations . . . was bound to cause a reaction on the Palestinian
street."
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said President Bush
"condemns in the strongest terms the assassination" and called on
Arafats government to "take vigorous action against terrorists. ...
The [Palestinian Authority] must immediately find and bring to justice
those who committed this murder, as well as those who would do harm to
efforts to restore an atmosphere of calm and security for Israelis and
Palestinians."
Zeevi, 75, a retired army general and perhaps the most hardline
nationalist in the Israeli cabinet, had announced on Monday his
decision to quit the government to protest what he regarded as Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's insufficiently aggressive military response to
Palestinian attacks. By law, his resignation would have taken effect
48 hours later, this afternoon.
He was shot shortly before 7 a.m. as he was returning from breakfast
to his 8th-floor room in East Jerusalem's Hyatt Regency hotel, where
he stayed when the Knesset, Israel's parliament, is in session. He was
hit at least twice in the head. Some moments later, his wife found his
lifeless body sprawled in the corridor. He was pronounced dead at 10
a.m. after doctors tried for 2_ hours to resuscitate him.
Initial reports suggested there were no witnesses to the shooting, but
a Jerusalem judge immediately ordered a ban on the publication of all
details regarding the investigation.
Although Zeevi usually carried a pistol, police said he was unarmed at
the time of the attack.
Shortly after Zeevi's death, the PFLP released a video showing three
men, two of them holding assault rifles, with their faces masked with
red-and-white checked headdresses. One of them read a statement in the
name of what he called the Brigades of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa, the
nom de guerre of the group's late leader, who was killed by Israeli
helicopter gunships in August.
"The assassination of the Zionist criminal Rehavam Zeevi is only the
first step according to the principles of an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth and one head for three heads," said one, apparently
reading from a prepared statement. Addressing the group's late leader,
the man said Zeevi's murder means "that you can rest in your grave."
With the possible exception of Sharon, there was no one on the Israeli
political scene who so inflamed Palestinians' fury as Zeevi. A member
of Israel's founding generation of Zionist fighters, he regarded the
Arabs as nothing but enemies, opposed all peace overtures and clung to
the conviction that tough military action alone was the antidote to
Israel's security problems.
He was the most prominent and passionate advocate of what he called
"transfer" and what Palestinians called ethnic cleansing by which he
meant forcing or inducing the departure of more than 4 million Arabs
in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sometimes he said the
departure should be "voluntary," but Arabs believed be favored
outright expulsion, and they cited his inflammatory rhetoric as proof.
This summer, he likened Palestinians working illegally in Israel to
"lice" and a "cancer" that had to be eradicated. When the moderate
Palestinian leader in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, died last spring, he
scolded Israelis for mourning the death, insisting Husseini was "an
enemy." He argued that Israel should demolish all Muslim homes in the
town of Beit Jala, an Arab town near Jerusalem from which Palestinian
snipers sometimes fired on a nearby Jewish neighborhood.
When he announced his resignation from the government Monday, Zeevi
blasted Sharon's policy, which he considered unforgivably timid: "Look
what we've gotten: funeral after funeral, explosion after explosion,
attack after attack. Oslo is dead, especially after the other side has
not fulfilled its obligations. . . . Arafat is not a partner for
peace, he's a liar, a man of blood."
As a 26-year army officer, a former top general and a lawmaker who
served in the Knesset since 1988, Zeevi was a household name in
Israel, reviled for his views by the dovish left and regarded as
something of a throwback by his colleagues on the hawkish right. To
one and all, he was known as "Gandhi," an improbable nickname he
picked up as a teenager by dressing on one occasion as the Indian
pacifist.