Police Share Blame in Israel Riot Report

An Israeli commission’s report on the Temple Mount blood bath exonerated police for firing on the stone-throwing crowd but also said there was indiscriminate shooting. The commission severely criticized police commanders for ignoring signs that a riot was imminent at the holy site.

Today’s report drew immediate criticism and renewed demands for a U.N. investigation of the incident.

The three-member commission said that Palestinians provoked the riot but that police showed little sensitivity to the Temple Mount as a holy place for Jews and for Muslims.

The report said that when police broke into the Temple Mount compound to confront Palestinian rioters, “there was indiscriminate use of live ammunition,” which it said “was unavoidable” to rescue two police officers thought to be trapped in a station on the Temple Mount and to secure their armory of three submachine guns and 43 handguns.

The commission did not give details of the “indiscriminate shooting,” which it noted only in general terms near the end of the 59-page report and not even mention in the report’s main conclusions.

The report implied that police may have fired their weapons when they were not in danger and may have continued firing after it was no longer necessary to gain control of the area. “The use of live fire was without strict supervision by officers,” it said.

Two days after the riot and bloodshed on Oct. 8, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir named the panel to investigate what led to the confrontation, which began after Arabs stoned Jews praying at the Western Wall.

Police said at the time that 19 Palestinians were killed and more than 140 others were wounded by Israeli gunfire, but today’s report said 20 people were killed.

The massacre prompted two U.N. Security Council resolutions, both of which brought the United States into conflict with Israel. The United States was the chief sponsor of a resolution, approved Oct. 12 by the council, condemning Israel for the shooting deaths of the Palestinians on the Temple Mount. The resolution also called for a U.N. investigation.

The United States voted against Israel again on Wednesday, for its refusal to admit U.N. investigators.

The Israeli commission said that police had prior information that rioting was likely on the Temple Mount. It said police commanders failed to recognize passions aroused by the 34-month-old Palestinian uprising, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the “inflammatory calls” of Muslim clerics a week earlier to block a rumored march to the Mount by Jewish zealots.