Grisly Find in Israel Sparks Anti-Arab Riot
The mutilated bodies of two missing teachers were found in a cave in central Israel today, and residents of the victims’ hometown went on an anti-Arab rampage.
Yosef Eliahu, 35, and Lea Almakais, 19, missing since last Sunday when they left their school in Afula, central Israel, had been dead several days, police said.
They said they believed that the two had been killed by Palestinian guerrillas.
In Afula, hundreds of people rioted opposite the local police station. Shouting “Death to terrorists,” they beat up Arab workmen and broke windows in the town six miles north of the occupied West Bank, witnesses said.
Police arrested dozens of people, state radio reported.
Eliahu’s blood-stained car containing a spent cartridge was found in the nearby West Bank town of Jenin shortly after the teachers disappeared. The narrow, rocky cave in which the bodies were hidden was about six miles from where the car was found.
The teachers’ deaths and the killing last month of another Israeli couple by two West Bank Arabs have sparked calls for tougher measures against guerrillas.
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Thursday that he wants to return to an earlier policy of expelling Arab guerrillas.
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