Israel’s brief respite from Arab terror ended when two Palestinian extremists stormed into an office in Gaza City and axed to death an Israeli lawyer working as a consultant for the European Community.
The attack Sunday was the first terrorist killing of an Israeli in nearly three weeks, and the second since Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sealed off the Gaza Strip in an effort to end a wave of violence that claimed 15 Jewish lives last month.
Palestinians from both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank continue to be banned from entering Israel proper, although the Cabinet decided Sunday to make exceptions for about 10,000 workers in order to ease the labor shortage crisis caused by the general closure.
Initial reports of Sunday’s attack in Gaza said that workers in the E.C. office, including Palestinians, pleaded with the armed men to spare the lawyer’s life, insisting he had done much to improve conditions for local Palestinians.
But the attackers ignored the pleas and hacked to death the lawyer, who was identified as being from a suburb near Tel Aviv. His name was being withheld.
The Gaza killing came two days after an apparent suicide car-bomb attack in the West Bank that largely missed its target.
The car attack, which occurred at a roadside rest stop, killed the bomber and a Palestinian restaurant worker, and lightly wounded eight soldiers and another Palestinian.
The restaurant, near the Jordan Valley settlement of Mehola, is a regular stop for both Israeli soldiers and civilian buses, reports said.
The incident occurred midday Friday, when a white van with Israeli license plates — later found to have been stolen from central Israel — pulled in and parked between two Israeli Egged passenger buses.
The van, carrying an explosive charge, metal shrapnel and two cylinders filled with cooking gas, blew up, destroying both passenger vehicles and spewing debris over a wide area.
One of the buses had been carrying soldiers and the other civilian passengers.
CABINET EXTENDS CLOSURE
“It was a miracle that both buses had discharged their passengers, who were standing at the cafe bar taking refreshments when the explosion occurred,” said a senior police officer.
The vehicles were set on fire and the casualties would have been far greater had the buses been filled at the time, security officials said.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by both the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement in the territories, and a group in Beirut calling itself Hezbollah-Palestine.
If the bomb was indeed found to have been set off by a suicide bomber, security sources said it would be the first such case inside the territories and would signal a sharp escalation in the level of terrorist violence.
The eight injured soldiers were treated for relatively minor cuts and bruises at the Ha’emek Hospital in Afula. Five were released by Friday afternoon, with another three held for further observation.
Although the two attacks over the weekend were the most serious since Rabin ordered the West Bank and Gaza Strip closed at the start of the month, it was noted that they both occurred inside the territories and not in Israel proper.
The Cabinet decided Sunday to extend the general closure “until further notice” and review it weekly, while gradually lifting it for specific groups of workers.
Work permits are still restricted to farm laborers, but the government is expected to gradually allow more and more construction workers to return to work in Israel.
The Cabinet decision came in sharp contrast to the Palestinian demand to lift the closure as one precondition for the resumption of the Middle East peace talks.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters that the closure would remain in force as long as there existed no other solution to the wave of attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Hugh Orgel in Tel Aviv.)
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