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| By israelinsider staff and partners August 6, 2005 |
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Troubling questions are being raised about why Eden Natan-Zada, the 19-year-old who killed four Israeli Arabs on a bus in Shfaram before being beaten to death, was not incarcerated after being absent without leave and in possession of his army-issue rifle for more than a month and a half.
Maj.-Gen Yiftah Ron-Tal Chief, Commander of IDF Ground Forces and Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz appointed investigative teams to find answers to some of the disturbing questions surrounding the attack, from the decision to draft the perpetrator, Eden Natan Zada, to the IDF's inability to track down the solider, known to be problematic and AWOL with a weapon.
The Army, the Military Police, and the Shin Bet internal security agency all apparently failed to respond vigorously to insistent pleas by his parents and an influential military correspondent to find and disarm a disturbed young man with a profile that had potential violence written all over him.
Both Israelis and Palestinians had been keenly aware of an abundance of warnings that a Jewish extremist might try to sabotage the Gaza withdrawal by attacking Arabs and diverting security forces.
And yet -- Private Natan-Zada, a young man of Yememite descent from a middle-class background in the town of Rishon lesion just south of Tel Aviv, had undergone a radical transformation in the past year, and his parents were deeply concerned about their son.
Natan-Zada was briefly detained three months ago for trying to reach the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.
In mid-June, when he was ordered to take part in building the "tent town" in Re'im for soldiers participating in the Gaza Strip evacuation, he refused to carry it out.
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"A week ago I addressed the people of Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif and promised them that just before the pullout there would be a massacre perpetrated by the Shabak."
Barry Chamish, investigative journalist
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He was twice tried and imprisoned by the army for refusing to participate in the expulsion of fellow Jews and actively participating in anti-expulsion protests.
Yitzhak Natan-Zada, 49, told The Associated Press that he had asked the army to find his son, who deserted after refusing to participate in the Gaza pullout and being jailed twice by the military. The father said he was concerned his son's weapons would fall into the hands of fanatics in Tapuah, the extremist settlement in the West Bank where the teenager fled.
Initial IDF investigations show that Natan-Zada's commanders went twice to his family home in Rishon Letzion after he had fled his unit in mid-June. But that, apparently, is as far as their investigation went.
Carmela Menashe, Israel Radio's influential military affairs correspondent, said she had been approached by the soldier's hysterical mother nearly two weeks ago, warning of danger. "She was very upset. She begged, shouted, implored," Menashe said on Israel TV.
Menashe said she repeatedly asked the army to look into the matter and asked for a response. She didn't hear back until two hours before the attack, when the army assured her that the matter was being taken care of. In fact, Menashe said she was interviewing the army chief, Dan Halutz, with a question about Natan-Zada on her list to ask him, when news of the attack broke.
At the beginning of July, according to Haaretz, the rabbi at Natan-Zada's base went to Tapuah to try to find the solder. He spoke with the rabbi at Tapuah, but did not see Natan-Zada. The Tapuah rabbi said Natan-Zada had not been seen at the settlement for quite some time, and suggested that he might have gone down to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip.
At this point, Haaretz reported, the regiment commander reported the case to the military's criminal investigations division and requested its involvement. He warned that the missing soldier had a gun, and was likely "to carry out criminal activity." Every effort should be made to locate Natan-Zada quickly, he said.
The soldier's mother, Debbie Natan-Zada, said she held the army responsible for her son's death. "I blame the army," she screamed at television cameras in an interview in their modest home after the attack.
The bloodshed raised questions about Israeli intelligence infiltration of the Israeli right, with some critics saying it falls far short of the Israeli penetration of Palestinian militant groups that is widely credited with reducing attacks on Israelis.
But Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, rejected the contention that Israel demands more from the Palestinian Authority regarding extremists than it is willing to do itself, saying "it's not a symmetrical situation."
"This thing that we're dealing with is indeed a very serious problem and it's something that we cannot tolerate as a democratic society," he said. "But still it's a far cry when you have on occasion one or two isolated incidents of this sort than when you have a whole society which is beset by terrorists."
Shabtai Shavit, a former head of the Mossad spy agency, said it is "almost impossible to detect or to have any kind of an early warning" when a single assassin acts on his own.
Investigators on Friday sought to determine if that was the case, though officials said teenagers from the Tapuah settlement had been detained for questioning.
So what happened? Was it a case of bureaucratic incompetence? The army apparently failed to take seriously the threat which Natan-Zada represented: its military police apparently made no serious attempt to locate and incarcerate him, even though he was know to be in the small Samarian settlement of Tapuach.
Friday's initial investigation revealed that the IDF did not pass on to the Shin Bet news of Natan's desertion and on his commander's warning that Natan-Zada could constitute a threat.
Some journalists, however, have speculated that there is another possible scenario: that the Shin Bet was in fact well aware of Natan-Zada's violent potential and exploited it for political purposes.
Investigative journalist Barry Chamish, author of a book claiming that the Rabin assassination was in fact carried out by the Shin Bet for political motives using convicted assassin Yigal Amir as a blank-shooting patsy, suggests something similar may have been happening here.
"A week ago I addressed the people of Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif and promised them that just before the pullout there would be a massacre perpetrated by the Shabak," Chamish recalled. "I used the example of the Hebron pullout to make my point."
"Back in 1997, Prime Minister Netanyahu couldn't get his Hebron withdrawal past his cabinet. The next day, an IDF soldier, Noam Friedman, who had just spent 3 months in a psychiatric ward, took a bus to Hebron and shot up the Arab market in front of numerous television cameras which happened to be there as well. Due to international pressure, the withdrawal was passed by the cabinet that evening."
"And I also told the gathered that the outrage would come from Kach, since the Shabak runs the organization. It is no coincidence that a few days before, Kach members publicly staged a Pulsa Dinura, death curse ceremony against Ariel Sharon. That trick was played one month before Rabin's murder by Kach members led by one Avigdor Eskin. So, surprise, surprise, the Shabak aided by IDF intelligence pulled the old rabbit out of its hat just when they were supposed to. As usual, the patsy [like convicted Rabin assassin Yigal Amir] was Yemenite." Chances are, he speculated, that during Natan-Zada's missing month he was being brainwashed by the Shin Bet to prepare him for carrying out the shooting.
Chamish suggested that the murder in Shfaram was a murder set up by the government for political purposes. Natan-Zada, he speculated, was used by the Shin Bet for the political purpose of blackeingn the name of the anti-expulsion movement, intimidating its leadership, and shifting public opinion. "None [of the rightwing leadership] dare to blame the real perpetrators, the government of Israel and its internal security apparatus."
"This setup is a double-edged blessing for the government, Chamish said. Until now, Druze soldiers had mostly refused to drag Jews out of their homes in Gush Katif, cage them like animals and force them away in trucks. Now they will cooperate. And of course, the public opinion that had turned against the rape of Gush Katif will instantaneously and dramatically shift."
Settler leader Bentzi Lieberman had warned that Jewish violence could harm opposition to the Gaza pullout by giving Sharon broader public backing, but backtracked Friday. "I don't see any linkage between [the anti-expulsion movement's] pure democratic ways and the evil things that some crazy man in Israel is doing," he said.
One practical result, much to the satisfaction of the government and the Shin Bet, will be a free hand in arresting anyone the secret security agency deems to be a threat to public security. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Saturday that the defense establishment would consider issuing warrants for the administrative detention of extreme right-wing activists, a move that he said he opposes in principle.
"We will take action to arrest everyone the Shin Bet recommends," Mofaz said during an interview on Channel Two's Meet the Press. He criticized right-wing leaders who he said incite violence, and linked Thursday's shooting attack in Shfaram to the infiltration of activists to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza.
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