Feelings were running high in towns and settlements all over Israel today over the alleged breakdown of security held responsible for the massacre of 21 students, a family of three and an Israeli soldier and the wounding of 70 in Maalot last week. In Safad, home of most of the victims, local residents have formed an “action committee” with plans to hold a demonstration in Jerusalem and to approach key government ministers about the security of border towns and villages.
The Safad group is demanding the speedy construction of shelters, a security patrol road, military guards for all schools and protection of outlying towns by regular army units rather than the local civil defense. They are also demanding the death penalty for terrorists. In Bnei Brak and Petach Tikva, the town councils have decided to establish a “civil guard” for security purposes.
The Safad school management committee announced yesterday that a leave of absence has been granted to Shlomo Ben-Lulu, headmaster of the state run religious vocational high school where the 21 youngsters massacred at Maalot were students. Ben-Lulu, overwrought by the tragedy, was attacked by furious parents when he went to Maalot last Thursday during the terrorist ordeal. He has not been seen nor heard from since then. The Safad school committee said he was staying with relatives. The school is being run by an appointee from the town’s educational department.
The school committee stressed that Ben-Lulu could not be held responsible in any way for sending his students on the three-day camping trip that ended in the Maalot massacre. He was acting according to rules that made it obligatory for high school students to participate in Gadna (paramilitary) outings, the school officials said.
Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lehat, a general in the army reserves, suggested that all teachers licensed to own firearms be permitted to carry their weapons to school. He renewed a proposal he made after the terrorist massacre of 18 in Kiryat Shemona April 11 that mobile military units be stationed permanently in strategic points in Tel Aviv and other towns, much like a fire brigade. The units. he said, would be able to reach any spot within minutes where terrorist activity is reported thus averting the costly delays that occurred at Kiryat Shemona and Maalot.
Meanwhile the army has responded to local outcries by establishing a special security officer for Safad. Maj. Gen. Rafael Elian, commander of the northern region, also assigned soldiers to back up police guards and civil defense units stationed at schools and in the central bus terminal in Safad.
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