Palestinian on Rampage Kills 2 Israelis, Injures 9

A Palestinian youth, a butcher knife in each hand, fatally stabbed two Israelis and wounded nine others Monday in a rampage through crowded Tel Aviv streets before he was caught by passersby and beaten to the ground.

Ziyad Salim Hussein Silmi, 19, an unemployed car painter from Gaza City, reportedly told police that he had been unable to find work for more than four months and in his frustration decided to kill Israelis.

One of Silmi’s brothers was imprisoned for 15 months as a member of the militant Muslim movement Islamic Jihad, and the group issued a statement from Damascus, Syria, also claiming him as a member. The statement called on other Palestinians to spread their jihad, or holy war, and to kill Israelis.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, under mounting pressure to prevent such attacks, Monday evening ordered the indefinite closure of the Gaza Strip, barring any of its 750,000 residents from leaving.

“The closure will be in effect starting (Tuesday) at 3 a.m.,” a military spokesman said. “The decision on the closure was intended, among other things, to check the validity of work permits (of Palestinians for jobs in Israel) and their conforming with exit permits from the Gaza Strip, and also to prevent violent encounters between residents of the Strip and of Israel.”

But Rabin warned that neither the Gaza Strip nor the West Bank could be closed indefinitely and that the 150,000 Palestinians who work in Israel are an important part of its economic fabric. Other measures, such as the forcible deportation 2 1/2 months ago of roughly 400 Islamic militants, have proved only partially effective.

Real security would come for Israel, Rabin argued, only with resolution of the Palestinian problem at Arab-Israeli peace talks. “In the long run, the solution must be political,” he said after briefing members of the Knesset, the country’s Parliament. “There is no other way.”

Rabin cautioned angry Knesset members: “We must not make an end to terror a prior condition (to the talks’ continuation) just as (the Arabs) must not make our activities in the war against terrorism a condition. Otherwise, the fate of the talks will be in the hands of Palestinian and Arab extremists.”

Yet Rabin is under serious political pressure to act decisively against terrorism, if he is to preserve his consensus for the compromise that will be necessary in those negotiations when they resume in Washington next month.

“We must strike back harder,” said Moshe Katsav, a Knesset member from the opposition Likud Party. Rehavam Zeevi from the right-wing Moledet Party called for a ban on Palestinians entering Israel. “They have no reason to be here,” Zeevi said.

The attack Monday was the latest in an almost weekly series of stabbings, shootings, bombings and stonings that are making Israelis fearful not only of an upsurge in the intifada , the five-year Palestinian rebellion against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also of walking the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa.

Israelis were warned in the wake of the killings that further attacks are possible, in part because of what security officials described as the “religious fervor” among many Palestinians because of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and rededication to Islamic ideals, which began a week ago.

Palestinians further are increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress in the Washington peace talks; when the talks began in October, 1991, they believed they were promised self-government within a year.

In Gaza, severe unemployment and widespread poverty have led to even greater despair than on the West Bank or in Arab East Jerusalem--and to a dramatic Islamic upsurge there. Six Palestinians were killed over the weekend in the Gaza Strip as suspected Israeli collaborators.

Silmi, one of 12 children, had arrived in south Tel Aviv with other Palestinians looking for work about 7:40 a.m. Monday. He had no criminal record, though he had been detained briefly on charges of stone throwing three years ago; he had all the passes necessary to work in Israel, police said.

Arriving in a van near Tel Aviv’s central bus station, Silmi immediately drew out the knives, one of which he had purchased only Sunday, and began to stab and slash those he met as he ran along Aliyah Street toward a large market, witnesses said.

His first victim, Natan Azariya, 28, a father of two, was standing outside his barbershop, chatting with a customer, when Silmi killed him, witnesses said. The second person fatally wounded was Grigory Abramov, 27, a new Russian immigrant from Bukhara in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan; he was on his way to his first day of work.

The other nine victims were also apparently attacked at random, police said, as Silmi ran along Aliyah Street, an area of wholesale businesses and import firms, toward a busy market; several were seriously injured.

Silmi was finally brought down by a parking lot attendant who clubbed him with an iron pipe; passersby quickly gathered to hit and kick him until police arrived.

“The whole time he was running and stabbing, running and stabbing,” one witness, identified only as Eli, told Army Radio. “He stabbed people in the shoulder, on the arm, in the stomach. He had more than one knife, he dropped one . . . but continued stabbing with the other.”

Police detained other Arab workers for questioning, and as two of them were pushed into a police van, at least 100 bystanders tried to attack them, shouting, “Kill the Arabs!” Extra police were brought in to guard against vengeance attacks on Arabs.