A Palestinian from the West Bank was arrested for stabbing three Jews in Jerusalem on Friday as the Israeli authorities deported four Gaza Strip activists they hold responsible for such random violence.
Yasser Taysir Daoud, 21, of Beit Diko village, near Ramallah, is suspected of the stabbings, which occurred on a busy street in Jewish western Jerusalem. The victims were two men and a woman, none of them badly hurt.
But the knifing enraged Jews. Passers-by beat and kicked the suspect. An Orthodox Jew who tried to shoot him was arrested.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was quoted as saying, “To my regret, the perpetrator was taken alive, and this hurts me very much.”
The police said that unlike earlier stabbings done in a fit of rage, the suspect committed a premeditated act for which he was carefully trained and had collaborators.
A Jerusalem magistrate remanded him in custody for 15 days, pending formal charges.
The four deportees were expelled to Lebanon a week after the High Court of Justice rejected their appeal and upheld the military orders for deportation issued March 23.
The four men, described has hard-core activists in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Al Fatah wing, were not charged with a specific offense but with creating a climate for Arab violence against Jews.
The deportations were carried out only a few days after U.S. Secretary of State James Baker repeated to Israeli officials American opposition to that policy.
JEWISH SHOPKEEPER MURDERED
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Monday that Baker raised the issue in his talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem on May 15 and 16.
“We continue to strongly oppose deportation as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as it pertains to the treatment of inhabitants of the occupied territories,” Tutwiler said.
“Israel’s deportation of Palestinians at this time cannot contribute to the development of a peace process,” she said.
At the United Nations in New York, Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar issued a statement expressing “deep regret” at the deportations, which he strongly deplored.
Israeli police, meanwhile, are trying to solve the murders of Omar Shahin, a broadcaster on Israel Radio’s Arabic language service, and Reuven David, a Jewish shopkeeper in Petach Tikva.
Shahin, a 47-year-old Israeli Arab, was found dead in his East Jerusalem office Friday with bullet holes in his head and chest.
The police theorize that he may have been a victim of Arab terrorists who kill fellow Arabs whom they suspect of collaborating with Israelis.
On the other hand, he was known to have been popular in his social milieu and police therefore played down the possibility he was murdered for associating with Jews.
Members of Shahin’s family say he may have been killed by Jewish extremists.
The police are convinced that the intifada motivated the murder of David, who was found dead in his Petach Tikva shop Sunday night.
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