Arab Terrorists Now Take Refuge in King David’s Ancient Hideout

The Hebron Hills have been a refuge for fighters and fugitives at least since the future King David hid in their many caves to escape a jealous King Saul 3,000 years ago.

Legend includes among their colorful residents a late 17th-Century Arab highwayman who specialized in intercepting money sent from the Diaspora to his Jewish neighbors. The Jews finally agreed to pay the thief regular protection money if he would leave them alone, justifying the outlay to their benefactors overseas as disbursements to the “Black Rabbi.”

In a famous battle during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Arab fighters from Surif and surrounding villages wiped out a detachment of 35 fighting men sent to help defend the nearby Gush Etzion bloc of Jewish settlements, which ultimately fell to the Arab side.

The Hebron Hills retain their special character today as the home of some of the most hot-blooded antagonists on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. So it is no surprise that they are a prime breeding ground for what Israeli security officials describe as a new type of West Bank terrorist.

Random Attacks

Increasingly, these officials say, random attacks on Israeli civilians are the work of young Arabs of the occupied territories acting on their own initiative rather than because they have received orders from some outside terrorist group.

Recent examples from this area include a seven-member band from Surif and two neighboring villages who, according to security sources, killed five Israelis and wounded 18 Jews and Arabs in a series of terrorist attacks dating from May, 1984. Two of the gang were captured in July and four others were killed and one captured in an army ambush near here in October.

A few days later, security forces found a cache of arms and ammunition and destroyed the homes of two suspected terrorists in Yatta, a village in the southern Hebron Hills.

In mid-November, the army sealed three houses in Sair, northeast of Hebron, charging that four teen-agers who lived in them were responsible for shooting at civilian and military vehicles.

Young Terrorists

Most of those accused of recent terrorist attacks were either not born or still young children when Israel captured the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War. Almost 60% of West Bank residents are younger than 20. This is the generation that has been throwing stones at Israeli settlers on the West Bank for years--but now its members are using guns, knives and bombs.

Palestinians on the West Bank are generally forbidden to possess firearms or explosives but, in practice, terrorists have had little trouble stealing them or buying them illegally. The thousands of Jewish settlers on the West Bank are routinely issued weapons for self-defense. And the Israeli army admitted last year that it had lost track of about 600 assault rifles, 400 Uzi submachine guns, 45 light mortars and seven bazookas.

The only other elements necessary are motive and daring, a top Israeli anti-terrorist expert said. And the emerging “home-grown” terrorist has both, this expert conceded. “The only thing he remembers from his childhood is the boot of the Israeli soldier and the bayonet of the occupation,” he said.

Some, like the man identified as the leader of the Surif gang, first come to the authorities’ notice as common criminals. Residents said Mohammed Ghneimat, who was killed in the October shoot-out with security forces, was a petty thief who later murdered another Surif man from a rival family, accusing him of collaboration with the Israeli authorities.

Escaped From Prison

Ghneimat was imprisoned but later escaped, according to Israeli sources. According to Surif residents, he was freed by the Israelis in return for promising to become an informer but then reneged on the deal.

Another of the Surif band killed in the October clash, Mohammed Bardaiye, 30, was an auto mechanic who, according to his mother, had become increasingly militant in recent years.

Ahmed Khamid Tus, who was captured in the shoot-out, is also an ex-convict with three children whose names translate as Strength, Revolution and Redemption.

Based largely on an account given by Tus to army interrogators, senior Israeli security sources said Ghneimat stole one assault rifle and bought a second from an Israeli underground figure after escaping from jail. Operating initially on his own, he attacked a group of Israeli hikers in Wadi Fukin, near here, in May, 1984, wounding one with gunfire.

Ambushed Bus

Later, Ghneimat enlisted Tus and the two of them allegedly ambushed an Israeli bus on the road between Jerusalem and Hebron in September, 1984, wounding several passengers.

Most of the expanding gang’s members reportedly lived outwardly normal lives until last July, when two were captured and accused of the murder of an Israeli couple near Bet Shemesh, west of Jerusalem. On Nov. 21, the two were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. After the arrest of the pair, the others went into hiding, living in caves and getting help from villagers until the army caught up with them in early October.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, it was not until after the Bet Shemesh murders that the Surif gang was recruited by the Palestine Liberation Organization. Those sources said the band was trying to escape to Jordan when it was ambushed.

Residents Ambivalent

The image of the Surif gang among other West Bank Palestinians suggests one reason for the increase in “home-grown” terrorism. The Palestinian press referred to them not as terrorists but as “commandos.” Here in Surif, residents seem ambivalent.

“If I join him and kill Jews, then what?” responded a 17-year-old when asked his attitude toward Ghneimat. “Then I’m dead, and my house is blown up.” But when asked how Palestinians will regard the gang members 50 years from now, the youth showed no hesitation: “They will remember them as martyrs, because Israel took our lands . . . . Hassan Said (Ghneimat’s middle names) killed Jews, not Arabs.”

“Of course they are heroes,” added Ahmed Bardaiye, head of Surif’s village council and a distant relative of Mohammed Bardaiye. Given the conditions of the Israeli occupation, he said, “everyone who defends his homeland is a martyr.” Asked whether the cause justifies the killing of innocent civilians, Bardaiye tempered his remarks slightly. “If he is a martyr, only God knows,” he said of Ghneimat.

Security sources said other factors have contributed to the increase in home-grown terrorism.

Many West Bank youths are inspired by what they perceive as the success of southern Lebanon’s militant Shia Muslims in driving the Israeli army back across the international border. It is, at best, a grossly oversimplified perception, but some Palestinians nonetheless see Lebanese-style guerrilla warfare as a model.

Seen as Heroes

Another factor was the release last spring of more than 1,100 mostly Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails in return for three Israeli prisoners of the Lebanon war. In a move that even moderate West Bank Palestinians agree was a mistake, about 600 of the freed men were allowed to return to their homes in the occupied territories, where they are now widely viewed as heroes.

The frequent use of collective punishment in the wake of terrorist incidents makes West Bank residents even more hostile, Israeli anti-terrorism experts concede.

Women and schoolchildren marched through the dusty streets in protest here when the army bulldozed the houses of the Surif gang into piles of rubble, leaving other family members homeless.

One of the men had a 4-year-old child, said Bardaiye, the village council chief, adding, “You shouldn’t punish a 4-year-old child because of the crimes of his father.”

The authorities also imposed a four-month ban on travel by Surif residents to neighboring Jordan. And according to Israel radio, six Israeli border guards who participated in a search of the village are charged with stealing from residents.

May Backfire

Sometimes collective punishment works to stop violence and sometimes it does not, a senior intelligence official said. In one case, he said, a West Bank town was quiet for five years after the army destroyed a home from which a hand grenade was thrown. In another, three children of a family whose house was destroyed later turned to terrorism.

The new home-grown terrorism is much more difficult to combat than infiltration, this source said, particularly since “the hard core of the problem is political. . . . It’s very hard to combat terrorist groups when they are backed by local citizens.”

The most effective weapon, he added, is the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service. It is an organization already well represented in Surif, residents are convinced.