Premier Menachem Begin confirmed this afternoon that he and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan have postponed their visit to Washington for a week as a result of yesterday’s terrorist massacre. He affirmed that the outrage need not affect the current Middle East peace process. He said the White House would announced shortly a new date for his meetings with President Carter that were to have begun this Tuesday.
At a press conference after today’s Cabinet meeting, Begin said that II terrorists were believed to have carried out the attack which was sea-borne from bases in Lebanon, that six were killed, two captured and three unaccounted for and believed to be at large somewhere in central Israel. He said the curfew imposed on the greater Tel Aviv area to protect the civilian population would remain in effect until all terrorists were rounded up. The dawn-to-dusk curfew affects some 300,000 persons. It was lifted from 2-5 p.m. local time today to enable people to go shopping.
Begin said that 37 Israeli civilians died in the terrorist assault and 76 were injured, including nine policemen, some of them critically. A later report put the number of injured at 82 and indicated that there may be additional fatalities. An army spokesman said this morning that 29 of the injured have been discharged from hospitals.
Begin stressed that the killers came from EI Fatah “the main constituent of the so-called PLO,” that the attack originated from terrorist bases in Lebanon and was master-minded by “Abu Jihad,” the pseudonym of the terrorist who heads EI Fatah’s military arm.
WILL EXAMINE ASPECTS OF SECURITY
Begin side-stepped repeated questions about possible retaliatory action by Israeli forces. “Such a question cannot be answered,” he told one reporter, adding, “What I can say is that those who kill Jews in our time cannot enjoy impunity.” He said there had been no appeal from the U.S. to Israel to show restraint and not launch massive reprisals. He repeated several times that Israel “would not forget” yesterday’s slaughter.
An army spokesman denied tonight a BBC report of a retaliatory air raid on Lebanon. He said no Israeli planes carried out any action across Israel’s borders.
Begin said, in reply to questions that all aspects of the security forces’ preparedness and how they handled the attack once it begun would be “examined.” Questions have been raised in the Israeli media as to how the terrorists penetrated Israel’s sea defenses and their progress along the main Tel Aviv-Haifa highway in a hijacked bus and the final shoot-out at a roadblock near Tel Aviv when the bus was set afire. Begin revealed that 25 of the dead were found in the bus, their bodies charred almost beyond recognition.
TERMS PLOA NAZI MOVEMENT
The Premier was grim and at an emotional pitch when he addressed the reporters. He denounced the PLO and the Soviet Union which, he said, supports and arms them, in equal terms, likening both to the Nazis in their determination to destroy Jews. The PLO, he noted, is headed by Yasir Arafat who was accorded recognition by the United Nations and applauded in the General Assembly. He called on the entire world “to stop and think” about this, saying it only confirmed what Israel has been arguing for “years–that the PLO is a Nazi movement…the basest ever to arise…whose sole aim is to kill Jews.”
“They never attack military installations,” he said. “They come to kill civilians…And these were the people who had ordained the ‘Palestine Covenant’ and whom the Arab world at Rabat (in 1973) appointed the sole representative of the Palestinian people. I hope all men of good will now reassess their appreciation of our position regarding the demands being made these days…which are in practice that Judaea, Samaria and Gaza become a state ruled by Yasir Arafat,” Begin said.
Begin disclosed that documents found on the terrorists showed that they intended to capture hostages and “make demands of the government of Israel.” (Israel Radio reported today that a list of imprisoned terrorists whose release was to be demanded had been found on the terrorists.)
Asked if the attack would affect the peace process, Begin replied, “If Egypt sincerely desires to reach a peace agreement, then this event should not prevent the negotiations from going forward.” He warmly thanked President Carter for his condolence message and said similar messages were received from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, British Prime Minister James Callaghan and United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. In reply to questions he said no expression of condolence had been forthcoming from Cairo. (See separate stories for reactions.)
(In Cairo, the Egyptian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Boutros Ghali, said the latest violence demonstrates the need for President Anwar Sadat’s initiative to succeed and to result in a Mideast settlement that would “establish a homeland for the Palestinians.” He added that the new violence proved that additional territory alone cannot guarantee Israel’s security.)
EXCORIATES THE SOVIET UNION
Begin was especially furious toward the Soviet Union. He noted repeatedly that the weapons carried by the terrorists, which included a light mortar and rapid firing machineguns were supplied by the Soviets. “Let the rulers of the Kremlin who saw what the Nazis did to the Jews–ask themselves
Begin opened the weekly Cabinet session today by calling on the ministers to stand and observe a minute’s silence to “honor the memory of the dead men, women and children, victims of our people’s war of survival, who were wantonly murdered. We wish the wounded complete and speedy recovery.”
Meanwhile, Israel has appealed to a number of countries with which it has diplomatic ties to rescind their recognition of the PLO as representative of the Palestinians. Israeli missions abroad had been instructed by the government to cite yesterday’s terrorist assault for which EI Fatah has taken credit as proof of the basically terrorist nature of the PLO.
The Israeli diplomatic missions have also been instructed to urge friendly members of parliaments in several countries to introduce motions condemning the attack and to urge their governments to cancel recognition of the PLO and shut down PLO offices in their cities.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Israeli missions had been up-dated on the major PLO atrocities of recent years, beginning with the 1969 Avivim school bus killings through the terrorist attacks on civilians in Maalot, Kiryat Shemona, Yuval, Beit Shean, Nahariya, Kikar Zion and Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem and the Lod Airport massacre and the sea-borne attack on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv in March, 1975.
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