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ISRAEL REACTS
MARCH 4, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
Following the third terrorist bombing in eight days, the Israeli government declared war on the Hamas, a militant Palestinian organization opposed to the current peace plan. Jim Lehrer discusses the status of negotiations and Israeli efforts to prevent further violence with the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Itamar Rabinovich.
JIM LEHRER: Any new information on the bombing, itself, that you can add to that report, the death toll still thirteen, twelve civilians plus the bomber, himself.
AMB. RABINOVICH: Unfortunately, the original grim reports are accurate.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And the suicide bomber had 30 pounds of explosive wrapped around him, that--
AMB. RABINOVICH: That is unfortunately still all true.
JIM LEHRER: Is there any question about his ties to Hamas?
AMB. RABINOVICH: No. There's been--there's been a version that this is an Islamic Jihad operation, but frankly, whether it's Hamas or whether it's Islamic Jihad is of little
consequence right now.
JIM LEHRER: It's--the, the--is there any word on where he might have gotten these explosives, or where he came from?
AMB. RABINOVICH: Just, just speculations, but the point is that--this is one of the more interesting, curious points in this sad saga, that one is focused in these situations on the lone suicide bomber, but the lone suicide bomber is part of a network that there is a--the original depot somewhere in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank, and there is a distribution network, and there is a supply route, and there is a preacher who does the brainwashing, and then there is the operative who does the final dispatching. And obviously that network is what we have to deal with.
JIM LEHRER: And that network is being dealt with now by this special task force that was set in motion today in Israel?
AMB. RABINOVICH: That is our share of it, but there is another important share that is to be done by the Palestinian Authority. We have left Gaza, and we have left the main cities of the West Bank. Part of the territory is still under our responsibility, and we all saw what we have been doing near Hebron, but in those areas where the Palestinian Authority holds sway, it is challenged with the need to do that.
JIM LEHRER: Is it your information that's where these, that's where this network begins, in the areas that are under Palestinian control?
AMB. RABINOVICH: This is where the political leadership of Hamas is. This is where the operational network is, and this is where the preacher is. When, when these demented young men go about exploding themselves and twenty or thirty others, it begins in a brainwashing session that almost invariably takes place in a place like Gaza or like Hebron.
JIM LEHRER: And what is the route that this man took to come to this Tel Aviv shopping center? Do you know yet?
AMB. RABINOVICH: No, we don't.
JIM LEHRER: When you say the preacher, you don't have a person in mind, a specific person, you mean a type, is that correct?
AMB. RABINOVICH: No. No. We do have the names of at least five or six preachers who have been doing this with impunity for two or three years now.
JIM LEHRER: Impunity meaning that nobody stops 'em and is this a violation of the law?
AMB. RABINOVICH: Of course it's a violation of the law.
JIM LEHRER: No. I mean, to preach what they're preaching.
AMB. RABINOVICH: To send somebody to kill other people is a violation of the law as I understand the law, yes.
JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And so--I meant these people are not preaching any kind of gospel or any kind of religion. They're preaching hate and murder is what you're saying.
AMB. RABINOVICH: Hate and murder, and they do the brainwashing that induces
normally a young man in his 20's, which is the type, to go, to go ahead and do that.
JIM LEHRER: Is it the Israeli government's position now that to stop this it has to be stopped back there at the source, it cannot be stopped within Israel, that the security measures just aren't good enough?
AMB. RABINOVICH: Right. There is not a single act that can do it. I think that we have to do what we have to do. The Palestinian Authority has its own share, and then there are the other Arab states. The Palestinian Authority is a fledgling political organization structure. It needs the support that the established Arab states can provide. The established Arab states are a part of the peace process, they support the peace process, they negotiate and implement with us, or to help the Palestinian Authority in what obviously is a very, very difficult challenge for the Palestinians, themselves.
JIM LEHRER: What is the Palestinian Authority not doing that the government of Israel wants them to do in this particular area to combat terrorism like this?
AMB. RABINOVICH: They are not going through a persistent campaign. This is not the first time some of the earlier incidents they mentioned, and some of--some of the ring leaders, the leaders of Hamas have been picked up, arrested briefly, and then released, and there has to be a consistent, persistent effort. Secondly, a message has to be sent that this is something that is bad, that is not only causes harm to the Palestinian cause but is abhorrent in its own right. It ought to be denounced. There can be no double messages or subtle suggestions that some form of struggle are legitimate and others are not, and all forms of terrorism must be denounced equally.
JIM LEHRER: Now, this new strike force that was formed today by your government, they plan to move into Palestinian Authority areas, if necessary?
AMB. RABINOVICH: I put the emphasis on if necessary. The term really is not so much a strike force as a staff.
JIM LEHRER: A staff, okay.
AMB. RABINOVICH: This is a staff headed by the director of the General Security Service and whose main efforts are, are to coordinate, to plan, to think of fresh ideas. We have still a situation described graphically by the reporter whereby we seem to be always one step behind the terrorists. The main idea with a staff like that is to be one step ahead of the terrorists. Now, we do not preclude acting in all regions, but our preference clearly is for the Palestinians to do what they need to do so that we don't have to, to go back to areas that we have already left.
JIM LEHRER: I read a report--maybe you can confirm it--that this particular suicide bomber had--was headed inside the shopping center, saw some Israeli soldiers there manning their posts, and then apparently decide, well, he couldn't get through there with his bomb, and that's when he decided to detonate himself on the--
AMB. RABINOVICH: Yes.
JIM LEHRER: --before he got in, is that correct?
AMB. RABINOVICH: I've read the same report, and this, this really underlines the difficulty of dealing with the suicide bomber. I've described before a suicide bomber as part of a network. That is where our hope is. We can deal with a network, but there is also a major difficulty. That is to say, when somebody is determined to kill himself at all costs somewhere, if he cannot do it in Point A. he'll do it in Point B, and that is something that on the practical level is very difficult to deal with.
JIM LEHRER: Why were the peace talks with Syria suspended?
AMB. RABINOVICH: They were not suspended. We decided as a categorical move. The government decided that the two days of talks that were scheduled for this week will not take place this week because the atmosphere is not right. When, when Israel is in a spin trying to deal with oncoming terrorist blows, when the country is in mourning, and these two days could wait, not a far reaching political statement, but an attempt to do the right thing for this time.
JIM LEHRER: In other words, it shouldn't be read that this means that the Israeli government believes that Syria somehow is tied into these terrorist attacks?
AMB. RABINOVICH: No, we do not believe that this originates in Syria. We would have preferred that the Syrians condemned these attacks in very clear language, but there is no conditionality here. We did--the government made its decision for the reasons I described below, and we are expressing our displeasure at the Syrian failure to condemn the attacks separately from that, but we are not conditioning one thing with the other.
JIM LEHRER: As we reported from Israel, thousands of young Palestinian men were detained and then several were, were arrested. Are things like that going to happen in the next few days? Is that what we should expect? Are there any other kinds of actions that the government under this new strike command are planning to take, or do you know?
AMB. RABINOVICH: I'm afraid that there isn't that many attractive measures that can be taken in order to combat terrorism, but I think that everybody in Israel and outside
Israel agrees that right now the priority is to stop the carnage, to stop this sustained offensive and terrorist campaign, and we'll do whatever it takes in order to stop it.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much.
AMB. RABINOVICH: Thank you very much.
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