West Bank Mayor Vows to Resign After Arson Attempt on Home

The Israeli-appointed mayor of the West Bank town of Bira said Saturday he will resign after arsonists believed to be Palestinian nationalists set fire to his home.

Palestinian firefighters said the family of Mayor Hassan Tawil was asleep inside during the attack on Saturday but that no one was injured. The fire damaged outer walls and the front door.

Tawil, 74, who was stabbed and seriously wounded in June, 1988, after he refused orders from Palestinian uprising leaders to resign, said he is finally quitting.

“I am exhausted,” he said in an interview. “I cannot perform my duties well. I cannot please the world. I wrote my resignation and will hand it in tomorrow. I am not going to go back on this. I am determined.”

Tawil said it was the third attempt to burn down his home since the uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip began 16 months ago. His son, Ahmed, said an anonymous telephone caller told the mayor Friday, “This is your last warning. You have to resign.”

Tawil said he could not submit his resignation Saturday because Israeli civil administration offices were closed for the Sabbath. However, Olivier Rappowitz, spokesman for the civil administration, insisted that Tawil had not and will not resign.

Tawil would be the second Palestinian mayor to resign during the uprising. The Israeli-appointed mayor of Nablus, Hafez Touqan, stepped down last year.

In a radio interview Saturday, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens accused the Palestine Liberation Organization of terrorizing Arab notables into rejecting Israel’s proposal for Palestinian elections.

Eighty-three prominent Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last week signed a proclamation calling Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s elections plan a gimmick.

“There is a wave of terror. . . . Not a day passes without people being killed who are suspected of not being 100% supporters of the PLO line,” Arens told Israel Radio.

“I suppose some, if not all, the people who signed that proclamation knew that if their names weren’t put at the bottom of that piece of paper, they might suffer a similar fate.”

At least six Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities have been killed by Arab assailants in the last week.

In continuing violence in the uprising, Israeli soldiers on Saturday shot and wounded at least 14 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and three in the West Bank, Arab reports said. However, the Israeli military command reported only three wounded in Gaza and two in the West Bank.