Hebron Time Bomb: Settlers Who Provoke

By LISA BEYER/HEBRON

It takes thick skin to be a Jewish settler in Hebron. This is the only place in the occupied territories where Jews live in the midst of Arabs, mingling daily with their hostile neighbors. "You have to be real tough to stick it out," says an Israeli government official.

The Jews of Hebron have been proving just how tough they are since 1968, when firebrand Rabbi Moshe Levinger and his American-born wife defied the Israeli government to lead a group of compatriots into the city and establish the first Jewish settlement in the newly occupied territories. Years later, when Levinger's car was stoned on a downtown street, he opened fire, killing an innocent Palestinian shopkeeper; he served only 10 weeks in jail for the crime.

Outrages on both sides have been common. "This is the wildest place in the West Bank," says a soldier on duty in Hebron. "Trouble waits around every corner." In a Palestinian community that tends to be deeply traditional and highly religious, Hebron's settlers move among their four compounds heavily armed. Especially visible among the 450 Jewish residents are 150 students of the Shavei Hebron Yeshiva: in pairs or threes they patrol the roads connecting the settler enclaves, assault rifles slung over their shoulders. As they saunter through the streets, Arab merchants grow anxious. The yeshiva boys frequently overturn their stalls or bash their cars. "It's a daily business the trouble they make," says shopkeeper Mohamad Sharif. The settlers admit to these actions, but say they commit them only when provoked.

Recent events, though, have rattled the Jews of Hebron. It is not that they are so fearful of Palestinian reprisals for the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs two weeks ago. "Terror we live with always," says settler spokesman Noam Arnon. Rather, they worry about what their own government will do to them to calm the outrage provoked by the killings. Says Shani Horowitz, a native of the Bronx who moved to Hebron 12 years ago: "The left is using this opportunity to lynch us."

Already, some of Horowitz's neighbors are on the run from police, facing detention without trial, and others are to be disarmed and barred from praying at the tomb, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims. The community's greatest fear, though, is that it will be evicted en masse, an option advocated by six of the 16 members of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's Cabinet. "It's hard to imagine that the nation would allow it," says Horowitz, "but who knows? Anything might happen now." A Rabin aide tends to agree. "The Prime Minister knows that Hebron is a time bomb. He'll have to defuse it somehow, no question about it."

The Hebron settlers feel they are being unfairly condemned for the sin of Baruch Goldstein, who came from neighboring Kiryat Arba. "What, we've all turned into bloodthirsty murderers?" says Horowitz. "We don't eat people." But they do incense them no end. Says the Rabin aide: "At least in other settlements, Jews can move around without rubbing it in the face of the Arabs. Not the Hebronites." When they chose their home, the Hebron Jews meant to trumpet their presence in the West Bank. Now the government must contemplate ejecting them to send as vocal a message.