Hebron Killer Acted Alone, Panel Decides : Mideast: Israeli commission criticizes lax security in deaths of Muslims shot by Jewish settler in a mosque. Palestinians denounce report for not assessing individual blame.

The Israeli commission investigating the massacre of at least 29 Palestinians in a mosque in the occupied West Bank four months ago concluded Sunday that a Jewish settler had acted alone in carrying out the “base and murderous act.”

The commission, headed by Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar, strongly criticized the lax discipline among the Israeli soldiers and police officers assigned to guard the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and their confused orders as contributing to the Feb. 25 blood bath.

But the five-member commission refused to extend that criticism to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who also serves as defense minister, or to any of his senior commanders, and it did not attempt to assess the broader issue of attacks by radical Israeli settlers on West Bank Palestinians.

“We do not believe that anyone can be blamed for not having foreseen the fact that a Jew would plan and carry out a massacre of Muslims in the Cave of the Patriarchs,” the report said.

The commission found that Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born gunman, might have been stopped had the full guard detail shown up at the tomb on the morning of the massacre.

Five of 10 guards were absent, including three who overslept.

Goldstein, a physician from the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba, a hotbed of radical settlers for two decades, walked into the tomb dressed in his army reserve uniform and opened fire with a Glilon assault rifle behind rows of kneeling worshipers. He was bludgeoned to death by worshipers.

“The evidence presented to us indicates that he acted alone,” the commission said, dismissing as confused and unproven Palestinian charges of a conspiracy and testimony from both Muslim worshipers and Israeli guards that suggested another settler might have been involved.

“We were not presented with credible proof that he was helped, while carrying out the killing or prior to that time, by another individual acting as an accomplice, nor was it proven to us that he had secret partners,” the commission added.

The report said 29 Palestinians were killed and 125 wounded. Independent checks with hospitals and family members after the massacre indicated that 30--and perhaps several more--had died.

But there was confusion over names from the beginning, and some victims were taken from the mosque to the cemetery.

After hearing 106 witnesses and reviewing the physical evidence, the Shamgar commission essentially accepted the argument of Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, the army chief of staff, who testified that the massacre “hit us like lightning from a clear blue sky.”

In its 338-page report, the commission said the army could not have predicted an attack by a Jewish extremist on Palestinians because intelligence reports focused on possible violence by Muslim militants against Jewish settlers.

Rabin, who had reluctantly agreed to demands from liberals in his Cabinet for the commission, accepted its findings and pledged to carry out its recommendations for improved security at the Hebron shrine, which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the Patriarch Abraham.

Palestinians, however, rejected the report for failing to assign responsibility, moral if not legal, within the Israeli political and military Establishment for the crime.

“The report was not enough because it concentrated on general faults in the Israeli army (and) about protection of the Muslim prayers at the mosque,” Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natshe said. “It does not (place) responsibility on individuals responsible for these faults, and it does not speak about the climate of threats and violence that allowed (the gunman) to kill.”

Palestinians had hoped that the inquiry report would focus on the need to remove the 450 Jewish settlers living downtown among Hebron’s 80,000 Arabs in order to preserve peace.

Saeb Erekat, minister for local government in the new Palestinian Authority, commented: “The Israeli government and its policy of (Jewish) settlement are completely responsible for this ugly crime.

“The Israelis must understand that their settlements and settlers are a time bomb that could explode in our face at any moment,” Erekat said. “That’s why we want to put this issue on the negotiating table now.”

Amnon Rubinstein, the Israeli education minister and one of the country’s most respected law professors, praised the commission for the work it had done, but expressed regret that it had not gone much further.

“What was not examined was the overall situation, the impossible situation of placing a primed explosive charge inside a barrel of gunpowder,” he said, referring to the militant Jewish settlers in and around Hebron, one of the largest Palestinian cities.

“What happened is the result of a whole Israeli policy,” Rubinstein said. “Its policy created that situation and led to great risks, and those risks are not about to disappear.”

Yossi Sarid, Israel’s environment minister, who had pressed for the special commission, acknowledged: “The commission doesn’t cut off any heads, but it does require that action be taken to examine the operational and disciplinary lapses and to take all the necessary steps.”

Under the commission’s recommendations, adopted Sunday evening at a special Cabinet meeting, Jews will be barred from carrying weapons into the shrine, and Jewish and Muslim worshipers will be strictly separated to prevent friction.

A special unit will be established to guard the shrine when it reopens, and special security equipment is being installed.

But Rabin said there are no guarantees that security forces could stop another massacre by a “Jewish madman who decides to open fire in one of a thousand mosques where prayers are held in the West Bank.”

“We have to fight the terrorist activities of those who kill Jews, and at the same time we have to enforce the law on those radical Israelis, those extremist settlers,” Rabin commented.

The commission cited lapses by Israeli police and troops in enforcing the law among Jewish settlers on the West Bank, including police refusal to investigate vigilante attacks by settlers unless a Palestinian victim filed a complaint.

Most Palestinians are intimidated by the heavily armed settlers or believe that their complaint will lead to nothing.

The panel also urged the army to clarify its orders on when troops may open fire to specify that soldiers may stop settlers from committing serious crimes. Soldiers had testified that even if they had seen Goldstein shooting, their orders barred them from firing at other Jews.

After the massacre, Israel detained the leadership of the anti-Arab Kach movement without trial and seized the arms of a few Jewish settlers. Goldstein was a longtime Kach activist.

Settler leaders praised the report for determining that Goldstein acted alone but criticized the recommendation that Jews no longer be allowed to enter the tomb armed, saying they need to carry weapons for self-defense.

“We will never accept any more limitations with regard to our prayers,” said Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, who heads a Jewish studies school in Kiryat Arba. “Jews should not be punished because of what has happened.”

Hebron today is a tense city, ready to explode in new violence.

A cordon remains around the Cave of the Patriarchs, which has been closed indefinitely pending new security arrangements.

The center of the city is a maze of checkpoints. At intersections where Jews and Arabs might meet, Israeli paratroopers keep their weapons poised, ready to shoot.