Four Slain Arabs Buried in Israel

Weeping mourners on Friday thronged the funerals of four Israeli Arab men and women gunned down by an AWOL soldier who had fled his army unit to protest Israel’s imminent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

The shooting attack, which ended when the gunman was beaten to death by a mob, heightened tensions in an already volatile atmosphere. It also spurred calls for harsher legal measures against those who tacitly or openly advocate violence to try to thwart the Gaza pullout, which is set to begin Aug. 17.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which had swiftly denounced the attacker as a “bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist,” vowed Friday to carry on with the pullout as planned. Twenty-one Jewish settlements in Gaza are to be evacuated, and Israeli troops are to withdraw from the seaside territory. Four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank will also be dismantled.

“Disengagement stays right on track,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said, using the Israeli term for the settlement hand-over. “We’re not going to let this fanatic steal the opportunity for peace that disengagement presents.”

The 19-year-old attacker, Eden Natan-Zada, opened fire on fellow passengers aboard Bus No. 165 about 5:30 p.m. Thursday as it passed through the mainly Arab town of Shfaram in Israel’s northern Galilee region. He killed the driver and three passengers and wounded 22 other people before a passenger jumped on him when he paused to reload his army-issued M-16 rifle.

Shfaram, a mixed Christian, Muslim and Druze town that is known to its 30,000 inhabitants as Shafa Amr, was plunged into mourning. Black banners fluttered from car antennas and were draped on the sides of buildings.

Two sisters in their early 20s, Hazar and Dina Turki, had been riding the bus together; on Friday they were buried together. Thousands of people joined in the Muslim funeral procession through hilly, sun-baked streets, some of them raising chants that declared the two young women to be martyrs. Many simply wept.

Christian funerals were held for the other two victims, bus driver Michel Bahout and passenger Nader Habek, both in their 50s. Loud cries of grief arose when their caskets were brought into the town’s Lutheran church, which was packed with mourners.

“This attack shows extremism is on the rise, and it scares me,” said schoolteacher Nemeh Jiriyes, who knew all of the victims and attended all the funerals. “I worry that there may be more such attacks until the disengagement ends.”

Israel put thousands of police and soldiers on alert, but the funerals ended peacefully. The damaged bus was hauled away, but by Friday morning the site had become an informal shrine, with candles, notes and bouquets of flowers.

Fear has been building in Israel for months that the Gaza pullout might trigger a fratricidal conflict. The country’s security services have repeatedly warned that Jewish extremists might try to derail the withdrawal by assassinating Sharon, or through other violence designed to ignite clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, including those who hold Israeli citizenship.

The military said Natan-Zada had slipped away from his army base in May, leaving behind a letter stating his opposition to the pullout. Since then, he had been living at the West Bank settlement of Tapuah, a stronghold of militant ideologues who believe that the West Bank and Gaza, occupied in 1967, were given to the Jewish people by God.

At Tapuah on Friday, friends of Natan-Zada, many of them adherents of the outlawed Kach movement inspired by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, praised him as a hero.

“He was a man of deep beliefs,” said a 28-year-old American-born Orthodox Jew who would allow himself to be identified only as Yaakov. “Whatever he believed, he did ... and now we see that he took the final step. We should bless his memory, and God should avenge his blood.”

Another friend, who insisted that only his first name, Gilad, be used, said, “It’s an honor for me to know someone like him.”

Three youngsters from the settlement, ranging in age from 15 to 17, were detained for questioning over whether they had been aware of Natan-Zada’s plans, Israel’s Channel Two reported.

Israeli military officials came under strong criticism for allegedly failing to pick up on signs that Natan-Zada posed a threat. The attacker’s parents, who live in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Le Zion, said they had alerted army officials that their son had joined a radical movement and still had his automatic rifle and uniform.

“They knew he was against the disengagement, that he didn’t want to be in the army, that he was living in Tapuah and that he had a gun,” Natan-Zada’s mother, Debbie, told reporters. “We begged them to go there and at least take his weapon.... I blame the army, period.”

Maj. Gen. Yiftah Ron-Tal told Israel Radio that the events leading up to the attack were still being pieced together. “It appears on the surface that we failed, and we must locate the failure and address it,” he said. “But I do not want to draw conclusions.”

Israel’s defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, took the unusual step of ordering that Natan-Zada be denied a military burial. Sharon, who telephoned Arab members of the Knesset on Friday to convey his condolences, gave instructions that the bereaved families be given all the benefits accorded to Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks.

The shooting revived debate over whether those who incite violence should be prosecuted. Many have likened recent rhetoric by far-right opponents of the Gaza pullout to extremist language heard in the months leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. The killer, Yigal Amir, was an ultranationalist Jew who said he acted to prevent Rabin from giving territory to the Palestinians.

Thursday’s attack also brought back memories of the 1994 shooting rampage by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down 29 Palestinians at a shrine in the West Bank town of Hebron before being killed by enraged worshipers. Today, Goldstein is revered by many far-right activists.

“Those who ride a tiger have to remember that the tiger has teeth,” columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yediot Aharonot daily newspaper. “The rabbis and politicians of the right have to take into account that among their listeners could be a Natan-Zada, an Amir, a Goldstein.”

Times staff writer King reported from Jerusalem and special correspondent Abukhater from Shfaram. Special correspondent Ilan Mizrahi in Tapuah contributed to this report.