Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem said here today that Premier Menachem Begin was in a way “philosophically” responsible for the June 2 bomb attacks which crippled the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah. Kollek made his remarks in an interview with reporter Phil Bronstein, taped for broadcast tonight on KQED, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television station.
He was asked whether Begin’s insistence on Jewish Biblical rights to the West Bank encouraged the violence against the mayors. Kollek replied, according to a transcript provided by telephone to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “I am sure that he doesn’t do it in an organizations sense, but philosophically he does. You have a situation where the government believes in this; then you will always have young people who will interpret it in their own way. Although the government is very much opposed to this, you have their philosophical support, therefore you cannot divorce it from the actions.”
Kollek, who is visiting here on a fund raising tour, said he thought the expulsion of Hebron Mayor Fold Kawasme is back firing against Israel. “I think it was stupid to expel him. One should have known that once he was expelled, he would travel all over the world and say all sorts of things.”
Kollek spoke of his long-standing proposal to separate Jerusalem into boroughs, along the lines of London. “Large cities must be divided up into smaller districts to give people more feelings of identity and responsibility,” the mayor said. By doing this in Jerusalem it “would give the Arabs the feeling of running their own affairs.” He stressed, however, that Jerusalem must never again be divided and also ruled out a municipality ruled jointly by Israelis and Arabs.
He said, however, “I think what the Arabs have to get is the running of holy places, school systems, to keep their nationality, to be allowed to go across the bridges to Arab countries, have clear communications with all their friends across the borders, and a variety of other things which we are willing to do and are willing to give.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
