BY AMNON HOLTZMANN

TEL AVIV — Many Israelis criticise the Oslo accords, arguing that they brought us the exploding buses. The facts tell a different story.

The Oslo accords were announced publicly on August 31, 1993. The first Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel occurred in Afula on April 6, 1994. In the period from the announcement of the accords to the Afula bombing, the Hamas organisation carried out attacks, mainly using knives, on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the Occupied Territories.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein shot at dozens of Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriachs [in Hebron] killing 29 of them. On March 8, 1994, Israel's largest circulating daily, Yediot Aharonot reported: “The Hamas organisation has distributed a circular in the [Occupied] Territories warning of five major actions in revenge for the massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs. The circular was signed by the operations HQ of the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades — the military wing of Hamas.”

In the Muslim tradition, the first memorial occasion for the dead is 40 days from the date of death. And, true to Hamas' promise, the Afula bombing took place precisely 40 days after the murders that Baruch Goldstein committed at the Cave of the Patriachs.

The day after the Afula bombing, Tommy Lapid, one of the Israel's better-known rednecks wrote an editorial in Maariv: “The murderous attack in Afula should be taken as first and foremost as a revenge attack for the murder in Hebron. The dead of Afula are as much victims of Dr Goldstein as the Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriachs.”

It should be remembered that another attack, on the route 18 bus on February 25, 1996, in which 25 Israelis were killed, occurred precisely on the second anniversary of the murders committed by Goldstein.

On March 3, 1994, Yediot Aharonot carried an interview conducted by a Newsday reporter with Goldstein's widow, Miriam. Among other comments she said: “Baruch wasn't a psychopath; he knew precisely what he was doing. He planned on doing what he did in order to stop the peace talks. He did for the people of Israel.”

[From <http://www.gush-shalom.org>. Translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe.]

From Green Left Weekly, May 1, 2002.
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