One Minute to Midnight Dr. Irving Moskowitz TERROR IN JERUSALEM Morning is usually a happy time for the children of the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of northern Jerusalem. Students with their bookbags and lunchboxes hurry off to school, looking forward to another day of learning Torah, feeling safe and secure in the capital of the Jewish State. But February 13 was no ordinary day. Without warning, gunfire riddled the Kamenitz Elementary School. A number of bullets hit the school building, but, miraculously, no children were injured. The shots were fired from the nearby Arab village of Dachiat Al Barid, in PLO-controlled territory right on the edge of Jerusalem. Law student Mordechai Ben Yaakov, who lives near the school, said that "since the implementation of the Oslo accords and the subsequent release and arming of convicted terrorists, I have often looked from my home at the Arab village a few hundred yards away and wondered if they will one day simply shoot into our homes. They did so today from area 'B,' where security remains the responsibility of the IDF. All of the peripheral neighborhoods of Jerusalem are in the same predicament." Some Israelis like to think that terrorism is primarily a problem associated with Judea, Samaria and Gaza--that residents of Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem don't have to worry about it. But with the handover of the territories to the PLO, there are parts of the capital that are separated from PLO territory by just a few hundred yards.

And there is no reason to believe that the PLO will make any serious effort to prevent such attacks. The same day as the Neve Yaakov shooting, the Chief of Military Intelligence, Major-General Moshe Ya'alon, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Arafat "has still not taken any significant steps against the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas within the Palestinian autonomy." In other words, Hamas is still legal; Hamas training camps still operate; Hamas members have not been disarmed. Periodically, PLO sources announce the "capture" of Islamic terrorists who were supposedly about to attack Israel. Those kinds of claims impress Westerners (and congressmen who have to decide whether or not to approve U.S. aid to the PLO). On the day after the Neve Yaakov attack, for example, Israel Army Radio ran a story, based on PLO sources, that "PLO security forces arrested two Arabs in Beit J'ala, adjacent to Bethlehem, who were on their way to carry out a terrorist attack in Israel." A few hours later, however, the truth emerged when Israeli Television reported that "the PLO-appointed governor of Bethlehem denied the earlier story of the arrests. He stated that no terrorists were arrested by PLO security forces." So the terror continues, the PLO stands idly by, and the Jewish left continues to hear no evil about the PLO, see no evil about the PLO, and speak no evil about the PLO. In Neve Yaakov, the children anxiously wonder when the next attack will come. Shmuel Freulich, a teacher at the Kaminetz school, said it was a miracle that none of the children were injured by the bullets. But how many more miracles can we count on?

Americans for A Safe Israel
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Outpost               - 12 -               February 1996