The leader of the right-wing Tehiya party has served notice that the party will quit the Likud-led coalition unless the government expels Palestinian leaders from East Jerusalem immediately and takes tougher measures to end the intifada.
Yuval Ne’eman, minister of science and energy, issued his ultimatum in a Voice of Israel radio interview Wednesday.
He spoke after the funerals Tuesday of the two Jewish teen-agers who were brutally murdered on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Saturday.
Ne’eman, a physicist of world renown, said he identified with rampaging Jewish mobs who randomly attacked and injured dozens of Arabs in Jerusalem before and after the funerals.
His call coincided with that of Ariel Sharon, the Likud housing minister, who urged the deportation of 150 Palestinian leaders and the use of harsh measures to end the intifada.
Although Tehiya commands only three seats in the 120-member Knesset, its defection could imperil the narrow-based Likud government.
Ne’eman complained that the formation of a right-wing “national” government under Likud has brought no change in the way the intifada was being combatted.
Ne’eman said it was not enough just to apprehend the murderers. That, he said, would be nothing more than a “cops-and-robbers” approach.
The intifada is a war, he said, and therefore a strategy is needed “to win that war.”
Ne’eman offered no specific strategy, but demanded the swift deportation of Palestinian leaders. He named Faisal Husseini, Radwan Abu-Ayyash, Sari Nusseibeh and Ziyyad abu-Ziyyad as the “nucleus of the leadership of the intifada.”
Those were the same Palestinians who Likud Knesset member Uzi Landau named ultimately responsible for the youths’ deaths.
The four were among the 26 Palestinians and left-wing Israeli Knesset members who met at a Jerusalem hotel Sunday but failed to agree on a joint statement on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
In addition, 32 right-wing Knesset members have signed a petition to bring Faisal Husseini, founder of the Arab Studies Institute, to trial. They claim “overwhelming evidence that Husseini has been involved in the leadership of the uprising.”
The current climate on the right supports Sharon’s argument that Israel can now act with impunity against the intifada because of the world’s preoccupation with the Persian Gulf crisis and the fury at home over the murders of Ronen Karamani and Lior Tubol.
Meanwhile, anti-Arab rioting continued in Jerusalem on Wednesday, despite pleas from Karamani’s father, Eliahu Karamani, not to hurt innocent people.
In some cases, Jews mistaken for Arabs were badly beaten.
Ne’eman refused to condemn the mob violence. “I feel like these crowds,” he told Voice of Israel radio.
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