Less than 24 hours before Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat was due to start his historic first visit to the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin accused Israel’s right wing of plotting to overturn the government with mass street violence and an attack on government buildings.
In what Israel Radio described as an “unprecedented violent verbal attack on the opposition,” Rabin charged that a massive financial campaign was being launched in Israel and abroad to organize demonstrations against the Arafat visit, scheduled to begin Friday afternoon.
The verbal attacks came as violence erupted near the Israeli border in Gaza, where members of the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement opened fire on Israeli soldiers traveling in a jeep.
Two soldiers were wounded, one moderately and one slightly, according to a military spokesman.
The gunmen, members of the Izz a-Din al-Kassam armed wing of Hamas, later claimed that the shootings were a “salute” to honor Arafat’s arrival.
Rabin, meanwhile, forecasting a “very stormy weekend,” told a Labor Party gathering on Thursday that settlers who have been encamped in a tent city opposite the Prime Minister’s Office the past few weeks to demonstrate against the Israeli-Palestine Liberation Organization peace initiative were planning to engage in a confrontation in eastern Jerusalem.
“There are report that the right-wing organizers are planning to move the tented camp from their present site near the Prime Minister’s Office to the Old City’s Damascus Gate to create tension between Jews and Arabs and cause a riot there,” Rabin said.
A FLAGRANT PROVOCATION
Such a move, he warned, would be a flagrant provocation aimed at the capital’s Palestinian residents and would be dealt with swiftly and drastically.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the right-wing campaign is not merely a struggle over. conflicting visions of the fate of Israel, or even an attempt to undermine the peace agreement.
Instead, he said, it is an attempt to attack Israeli democracy.
Police Minister Moshe Shahal warned that the planned protests were in clear contravention of the law, but that the police were not planning to carry out any preventive arrests.
In an effort to ensure Arafat’s safety this weekend, more than half of Israel’s police force, together with thousands of Israel Defence Force soldiers, will be pressed into service.
Security forces will attempt to avert any violence against Arafat, who has been threatened by both anti-Arafat Palestinians and extremist Israelis.
They will also have their hands full if the promised demonstrations take place, particularly in Jerusalem, where Likud Mayor Ehud Olmert has said he hopes to organize some 500,000 Jerusalemites and others to create chaos in the capital to disrupt the Arafat visit.
Government sources criticized what they described as the anomaly of an elected mayor calling for mass demonstrations in the streets of his own city for political purposes.
Palestinian police officials indicated they will require no fewer than 4,000 security and administrative personnel for Arafat’s visit to Gaza.
They said they will require an additional 1,200 security personnel if Arafat decides to visit Jericho.
Virtually all of the more than 800,000 residents of Gaza are expected to crowd into Gaza City by bus, car, on horse-back and on foot to catch a glimpse of their leader and hear him address the crowd upon his arrival Friday.
On Thursday, within hours after the PLO leader issued the surprise announcement that he was coming to Gaza on Friday, Rabin weathered a storm of protest provoked by his suggestion that the Arafat visit begin Saturday.
Rabin’s request for a day’s postponement aroused the fury of religious leaders, who protested vociferously at the mass desecration of the Sabbath that would result from tens of thousands of police and IDF personnel having to be on duty to ensure security during the visit.
When Egyptian officials asked for an earlier start to the visit, Rabin readily agreed.
(JTA Tel Aviv correspondent Hugh Orgel contributed to this report.)
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