Right-wing extremists in Israel suspected in pipe bombing

ShareThis

JERUSALEM -- For a man who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of peace, it was an odd sensation for Yariv Oppenheimer to have his house guarded by armed men this week.Oppenheimer, secretary-general of Israel's Peace Now movement, was under police protection after an assassination attempt on another of the group's prominent members and the discovery of a suspected plan by right-wing Jewish extremists to target leaders of the pro-peace, left-wing lobbying group.The incident follows a recent surge in violence by Jewish settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians, sparking speculation that it may be part of an effort to further derail the already stumbling Israeli-Palestinian peace process.Zeev Sternhell, a 73-year-old political science professor and controversial newspaper columnist, was slightly wounded when a pipe bomb exploded as he arrived outside his Jerusalem residence late Wednesday night. Police said the attack was "ideological" and said they found pamphlets at the scene offering 1.1 million shekels (about $333,000) to anyone who kills a member of Peace Now.The pamphlet appeared to have been designed by extremists affiliated with Israel's settler movement, which claims the Bible gives Jews the right to live in the Palestinian-populated West Bank. The pamphlet called for the establishment of a religious "Kingdom of Judea" in Israel and the West Bank that would follow strict Jewish religious law.Oppenheimer said the attack on Sternhell was a sign of the growing strength of the extreme right wing in Israel. He said the government had encouraged a sense of lawlessness by allowing settlers to establish new illegal outposts in the West Bank and by turning a blind eye to their attacks on Palestinians, which settlers call retaliatory. That sense of impunity encouraged the extremists to attempt an attack inside Israel itself, he said."There is a problem in Israeli society in that we have a huge number of lunatics, and the leaders of Israel -- Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter -- are not doing enough to fight these people," Oppenheimer said in a telephone interview Thursday. "When Israel does not evacuate illegal outposts (in the West Bank), this is a sign to settlers that you can break the law and no one is going to respond.Though there have been few discernible signs of progress in the peace talks that President Bush launched last year at a summit in Annapolis, Md., both outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his likely successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, have inflamed passions on the political right by advocating a two-state solution to the conflict.That would almost certainly mean the dismantling of most or all of the 121 Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War, ahead of the creation of a Palestinian state there.Some on Israel's extreme right are proud of Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated then-prime-minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, forever derailing the original Oslo peace process. Analysts speculated that the escalating campaign of settler violence is aimed at ensuring the collapse of the already faltering Annapolis effort.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)