Middle East terrorism declined dramatically in 1990 because of reduced activity by Palestinian terrorist groups, the State Department said Tuesday.
The department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report found that the number of terrorist incidents in the Middle East dropped sharply from 193 in 1989 to 63 in 1990.
In addition, attacks launched in other regions by groups based in the Middle East fell from 43 in 1989 to 21 last year.
Next to U.S. citizens, Israelis and Pakistanis were the most frequent targets of terrorists last year.
Among the year’s 41 “significant terrorist incidents,” according to the report, five involved killings or attempted killings of Israelis.
Two other attacks in this category took place in connection with Eastern European countries assisting Soviet Jewish immigration to Israel.
The report warned that Eastern European countries re-establishing diplomatic relations with Israel or easing the transport of Soviet Jews immigrating to Israel may become terrorist targets.
It cited an attempted firebombing of a Soviet Consulate in Poland, an attack on the Polish ambassador to Lebanon and an attack on the Romanian Embassy in Beirut.
TEL AVIV BEACH ATTEMPT CITED
The report cited as “most serious incident” the aborted seaborne terrorist attack on the crowded Tel Aviv beachfront during the Shavuot holiday last May 30. Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front were killed in the attack and 12 captured.
That attack and the failure of the Palestine Liberation Organization to expel the terrorist faction’s leader, Mohammed (Abul) Abbas from the PLO executive committee resulted in the suspension of the U.S. dialogue with the PLO.
The report said the attack was carried out by the Abbas group, with “substantial assistance from Libya.”
Other successful or failed attacks against Israel in 1990 included:
* The killing of nine Israelis and wounding of 17 in Egypt in February, when their tour bus was ambushed by terrorists apparently linked to the Palestine Islamic Jihad.
* The killing of four Israelis by an Egyptian policeman on an Israeli tour bus in November near the Israeli-Egyptian border.
* The killing of three Israelis and wounding of another in Jerusalem in October by a Palestinian stabber. The attack was claimed by two anonymous callers, one from the Islamic Jihad and another from the PLO constituent group Force 17.
* The attempted mailing of letter bombs to Jewish and Christian community leaders, which were discovered at Tel Aviv’s central post office in January 1990.
Also in January 1990, the Jewish extremist group Sicarii claimed responsibility for planting a dummy grenade under the car of the wife of Israeli Labor Party leader Shimon Peres.
“The Sicarii also threatened attacks on four Israeli members of Parliament because of their support for a Palestinian peace demonstration,” the report said.
Following the Nov. 5 assassination in New York of Kach party leader Meir Kahane, “Israeli peace activists and prominent Palestinian figures received a number of death threats from (his) supporters.”
10 ISRAELI DEATHS BY PALESTINIANS
Last year marked the third full year of the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the State Department considers “primarily a civil insurrection that contains elements of terrorism in specific instances.”
In 1990, Israeli security forces killed 140 Palestinians, down from 335 last year and 304 in 1988, the report stated.
The bloodiest Israeli-Palestinian event took place last October on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where 17 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire after a large crowd converged on the mount and threw rocks down at the Western Wall area beneath.
Israeli troops and settlers in the territories suffered 10 deaths in 1990 at the hands of Palestinians, the report said.
At the same time, 165 Palestinians were killed by fellow Palestinians, up from 128 in 1989 and 25 in 1988.
The report cited Israel’s “strong emphasis on security measures,” with even schoolchildren receiving instruction in bomb detection.
Israeli courts “generally hand out strict prison sentences to those convicted of terrorist attacks,” the report said. However, in December, “an Israeli prison review panel released three convicted members of the Jewish underground” after they served six years of their 10-year sentences.
The three were originally given life sentences in 1985 for murdering three Arab students and wounding more than 30 others, but Israeli President Chaim Herzog commuted the sentences to 10 years in 1989.
The report cited among Israel’s “more forceful measures to thwart or deter attacks” its continued incarceration of Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a prominent Moslem cleric in southern Lebanon, who was seized by Israeli forces in July 1989, in an attempt to “exchange him for Israeli hostages and (prisoners of war) held by Lebanese and other groups.”
Among the Israeli-related terrorist deaths elsewhere cited by the report was the killing of an American citizen operating an orphanage in the Israeli-controlled section of southern Lebanon by perpetrators who thought he was helping to resettle Eastern European Jews.
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.
