Tardy Mosque Guards Blamed in Massacre

The massacre of Muslim worshipers by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank two weeks ago could have been prevented had the soldiers and police assigned to protect the mosque reported for duty on time, a top Israeli general said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, acting commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank, also told a public inquiry into the attack at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron that the army had never considered the possibility of such Jewish terrorism against Palestinians, despite repeated threats by extremist groups.

“Such an act by a madman is not something that, according to experience, . . . we expected would happen at the Cave of the Patriarchs or any other place,” Yatom said. “When a crazy Jew decides on such a terrible thing, he could choose thousands of other places to do it.”

Yatom, questioned at the opening session of a special state commission investigating the atrocity, nevertheless said that if the full force of soldiers and police had been present at the mosque and followed security procedures, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the killer, “would never have been able to enter.”

Only one of two soldiers and none of four police assigned to the Muslim section of the shrine had arrived for duty Feb. 25 when Goldstein, a physician from the nearby Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, entered from the Jewish side and gunned down rows of Palestinian men as they knelt at morning prayers.

Yatom’s twin admissions ensure that the five-member commission will, from the outset, investigate both the chronic indiscipline in Israel’s security forces and the failure of the government, as well as the security police, to take seriously dangers posed by radical settlers.

The commission also must decide whether to grapple with the underlying issues of Jewish extremism and violence; the threat they constitute to Israeli democracy and to peace with the Palestinians, and the measures the government should take.

Dozens of specific questions are already before the commission: How many people were killed, how many wounded, how many died in subsequent riots? Did Goldstein act alone? Was the extremist Kach movement, to which Goldstein belonged, involved? Why was Goldstein not investigated after Palestinian leaders complained about threats by him? Were Palestinians planning to attack Israeli settlers, and did Goldstein, as his family and friends allege, actually prevent a massacre of Jews?

“In every tense situation, there is the birth of hundreds of rumors, and you can become their victim,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Tuesday, stressing the importance of the independent commission’s fact-finding role. “Israeli justice will not allow a cover-up.”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initially opposed the commission as unnecessary, expressed his “complete confidence” in the security forces and their commanders but added, “That doesn’t mean there aren’t foul-ups here and there.”

The investigation is certain to reach into top echelons of the country’s political, military and security establishments. The commission’s recommendations could have a far-reaching impact.

Israeli radio and television broadcast the hearing live from Israel’s Supreme Court.

The panel is headed by Meir Shamgar, president of the Supreme Court, and includes an Israeli Arab judge, a retired army chief of staff, a university president active in the Peace Now movement and a veteran Supreme Court justice who has specialized in criminal law.

Yatom, the first witness, told the panel he felt “deep shock” over the massacre. “To this day, I am having trouble digesting the fact that any man was capable of carrying out such carnage,” he said.

The general, who also serves as Rabin’s military secretary, testified for 2 1/2 hours in public testimony, then for 1 1/2 hours more in a closed session on sensitive issues such as military deployments. Other army officers then began testifying.

Yatom said there had been no warning of the attack from military intelligence officers or from Shin Bet, Israel’s security police. In their planning, army commanders had not discussed the possibility of Jewish terrorist attacks, he said, and intelligence briefings included only assessments of possible Palestinian attacks on Jews.

To Yatom, the security flaw lay in the failure by five soldiers and police assigned to the Ibrahim Mosque to report for duty on time for dawn prayers. He surmised that they had overslept.

“Five (men) were missing. The significance is that in the hall closest to where the incident took place, there was only an officer where there should be an officer and another five,” Yatom said. “In retrospect, my impression is the security plan (at the Cave of the Patriarchs) provided a very good answer, if it were carried out. . . . I think, in reality, this plan could have prevented Goldstein’s action, the massacre. If it did not prevent it, it at least would have made it very difficult for this murderer to carry out his plot.”

An army investigation had found that Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians in the mosque before he was overpowered and beaten to death, Yatom said. Three more Palestinians were trampled to death by the crowd in panicked efforts to escape the mosque; troops fatally shot five people in subsequent riots in the town, the army found. Ninety people were wounded at the mosque and elsewhere in Hebron that day.

The Palestinian Human Rights Information Center initially reported that 48 people were killed at the mosque; government officials gave 39 as the toll; the Palestine Liberation Organization put the figure as high as 63 dead.

The commission’s task of establishing who was killed and how will be complicated by the practice among Muslims of almost immediate burial of the dead, most without autopsies.

Judge Abdel Rahman Zouabi, an Israeli Arab, questioned the policy that let Jewish settlers carry guns into the Cave of the Patriarchs, a shrine holy to Jews and Muslims, when they came to pray. “I still do not understand why a worshiper who has come to pray to God has to have a gun,” Zouabi said.

Maj. Dov Satelman replied, “Somebody at a much higher rank than me decided that in the past.”

In his testimony, Yatom noted that shortly after 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, Goldstein met an army officer outside who asked him why he was wearing his army uniform. “The officer asked him: ‘What’s the uniform for, doctor? Are you on reserve duty?’ ” Yatom said. “Dr. Goldstein answered, ‘Yes, I am on reserve duty.’ ”

At about 5:20 a.m., Goldstein, carrying a loaded Galil assault rifle, passed at least two other soldiers at the main entrance to the massive complex of prayer halls in the tomb. He was not stopped. “They knew Dr. Goldstein’s face, his name, his civilian profession. The officer knew he was a doctor in the same reserve unit,” Yatom said.

Peres, speaking with American correspondents, said the government will not permit arms to be brought into the shrine in the future and that separate prayer times will be established for Jews and Muslims and other security measures instituted before the Cave of the Patriarchs is reopened.

Two more Palestinians, described as wanted members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, were killed by Israeli troops Tuesday in a clash as they tried to leave the Gaza Strip and enter Israel. An army spokesman said they were shot dead when their car was stopped at a checkpoint and one man pulled out an Uzi submachine gun.

Hamas threatened Monday to carry out suicide attacks if five Jewish settlements are not evacuated by March 15. “We have chosen our targets and our living martyrs have been instructed to carry out the suicide operations,” a leaflet issued by the group said.

Israeli police, meanwhile, arrested two fugitive leaders of radical anti-Arab Jewish groups Tuesday, bringing the number held without charge under administrative detention to four.