2 Israelis Slain in Ambush of Bus Near Hebron

Two Israelis were killed and five injured Sunday night when a packed bus was ambushed near Kiryat Arba, the militant Jewish settlement on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Hebron.

At least two of the injured were children, Israel Radio reported. They were both said to be in serious condition.

The ambush--thought to have been carried out by Palestinians--is the first serious attack on an Israeli target since Jan. 22, when a pair of suicide bombers blew up themselves and 21 Israelis at a bus stop in northern Israel. That attack virtually paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which only recently started making headway again.

On Israel Radio, opposition members blamed the ambush on Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government, charging that its plan to pull Israeli troops out of West Bank towns and villages and hand over control to the Palestinian Authority is encouraging militants to prey on Jewish settlers there.

There was no response from the Rabin government to the ambush, which Israel Radio said killed two veteran settlers: Yehuda Fartosh of Kiryat Arba and Nahum Hoss. But but the army reportedly flooded the scene with troops, both to hunt for suspects and to prevent revenge attacks by settlers. Israel Radio reported that dozens of settlers rampaged near the site shortly after the shooting, throwing stones at cars and smashing shop windows.

Military sources said that the bus, the No. 160, was making its usual run from Jerusalem to Kiryat Arba when it came under fire at about 8 p.m. near the “Glass Junction,” the northern entrance to Hebron. Rickety shops along the road sell colorful, handblown Hebron glass. An army roadblock is nearby.

Passengers told soldiers that they were shot at from Arab houses. The bus was riddled with bullet holes, and many of its windows were shattered in the attack.

In the past two years, the junction and surrounding areas have been the sites of eight similar attacks against settlers. The army has been hunting a cell of Iziddin al-Qassam--the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas--that is thought to be carrying out the attacks. No one had yet claimed responsibility for the Sunday shooting.

Hamas and another militant Islamic organization, Islamic Jihad, have vowed to try to wreck the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord by attacking Israelis. Rabin has said publicly that the attacks have badly eroded Israeli public support for making peace with the Palestinians. He also has said that Israel will pace the implementation of its peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization according to the group’s ability to prevent attacks on Israelis.

Relations are tense between settlers and Palestinians in Hebron, a city of 80,000. It is the only place in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where settlers live in the heart of a Palestinian town, under massive military guard. Several dozen Jewish families live in various downtown Hebron sites and consider themselves an extension of Kiryat Arba, a settlement that is home to about 6,000 Jews.

There have been frequent clashes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in and around the town since Rabbi Moshe Levinger started the first settlement there shortly after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East War.

One of the bloodier attacks occurred Feb. 25, 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler from Kiryat Arba, opened fire on praying Muslims in the Ibrahim mosque section of the Cave of the Patriarchs, a site revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial site of their mutual patriarch, Abraham, and several members of his family. Goldstein killed about 30 Palestinians before he was beaten to death.

Since the mosque massacre, which temporarily derailed Israel’s peace negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab states, the army has blanketed Hebron with troops, seeking to prevent further clashes between Palestinians and settlers.

But tensions are mounting in Hebron as rumors intensify that the army will soon pull out of at least one West Bank town--Janin, 65 miles north of Hebron--in a goodwill gesture to the Palestinians. Settlers are bitterly opposed to the government’s plan to withdraw from Palestinian towns and villages, arguing that such a redeployment will endanger their communities.

More than 100 Israeli settlements are scattered across the West Bank. Under the accord Israel signed with the PLO in 1993, the Israelis were supposed to have allowed Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip a year ago and were to have withdrawn their troops no later than the eve of those elections.

But Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been badly bogged down by arguments over security, with Israel accusing PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat of failing to prevent attacks on Israelis. Recently, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Arafat agreed to set a target date of July 1 to finish their negotiations on redeployment and elections.

Israeli newspapers have reported that quiet contacts between the Rabin government and the Palestinians are under way to try to work out a phased Israeli withdrawal from the territories, possibly starting with Janin, which has no nearby Jewish settlements. The Palestinians have repeatedly denied that they will accept a limited pullout.