Security Lies Only in Peace, Rabin Says : Israel: The nation has no total defense against radicals, prime minister acknowledges. He implores people to support talks.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, while seeking to calm the nation after two terrorist bombings that have killed 12 Israelis, acknowledged Monday that Israel--despite all its military might--does not have a total defense against attacks by radical Palestinians opposed to Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.

The lives of Israelis and Palestinians have become far too integrated to untangle, Rabin said, arguing that real security lies only in peace and imploring his people to remain with the peace process despite the bloodshed.

“We will probably not be able to prevent completely terrorist attacks, but peace will be victorious,” Rabin told the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, as heckling from the opposition Likud Party and other right-wing members rose to a roar.

Even with troop reinforcements along “sovereign Israel’s” borders with the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, closing Israel to most Palestinians, Rabin warned that Israelis would continue to be targets for terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists from the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and other radicals.

“Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Arabs, thousands of vehicles mix with each other every day,” Rabin said. “One population lives inside the other. There are many ways to cross from the (occupied) territories to Israel, fewer from the Gaza Strip, more from the West Bank, some ways are known, others are secret. . . . The territories cannot be hermetically sealed.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud chairman, replied that since the government and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian self-government, “the pace of murder and terrorism has been multiplied by four.”

“The government has failed in the central mission of every government in Israel--to defend the life of every citizen,” Netanyahu declared. “That failure is a direct result of (its) policy.”

The debate came just two hours after another terrorist attack. A 17-year-old Palestinian from the Kalandiyeh refugee camp outside Jerusalem struck two Israelis with an ax while riding on a bus headed toward the capital’s northern suburbs, police said. An army sergeant major shot and wounded the youth, who also had two firebombs, as well as three other Israeli passengers.

Rafi Peled, Israel’s police commissioner, urged more public vigilance, especially on buses, after the latest attack.

In two suicide attacks earlier this month, Hamas bombers killed 12 Israelis and wounded 73 people. Hamas said the bombings were in reprisal for a Jewish settler’s massacre of about 30 Palestinians at a Hebron mosque in February.

Warning that more attacks are probable, Rabin insisted that peace efforts must continue--and he implied that the bloodshed will end only when Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

“For 27 years, we have ruled another people who do not want us to rule over them,” he said.

“For 27 years, Palestinians in the territories get up in the morning--Palestinians who today number 1.8 million men and women--and nurse their burning hatred for us as Israelis and as Jews,” the prime minister continued.

“Every single morning, they get up to a difficult life, which is not exclusively but (partially) our fault. We cannot deny that continuing to rule over a people foreign to us, who do not want us, has inflicted a painful price--the price of never-ending conflict between us.”