MIDDLE EAST: Violent Week: The Politics of Death

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Communist mayor of Nazareth, called for a one-day general strike in Galilee for last week. The government tried hard to prevent it; some Arabs charge that workers were threatened with loss of their jobs if they failed to show up for work. Jerusalem claimed that fewer than half the 107 Arab villages participated in the strike. But in at least a dozen communities, police and soldiers battled with angry Arabs; three of them were killed in Sakhnin and one each in Araba, Kfar Kanna and Tira.

How the six Arabs died is still disputed. Minister of Police Shlomo Hillel insists that shots were fired in self-defense. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, replying to angry criticism in the Knesset the day after the shootings, argued that force had been necessary "to assure the well-being of the public." He accused the Rakah (Communist) Party and the Communist Youth Union of breaking into schools, beating up teachers and driving away pupils who wanted to study rather than strike. Merchants who wanted to keep their shops open were intimidated; roads were blocked, security forces assaulted. Thundered Rabin: "No state can acquiesce to such breaches of order."

Arabs angrily challenge the government version of what happened. Cabled TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff, who visited Sakhnin the day after the shootings: "The villagers claim that the night before the planned strike, about 300 soldiers drove into Sakhnin, firing rifles and machine guns into the air and then into houses. The townsmen insist that they set up roadblocks to keep the soldiers out of the village; when soldiers tried to enter homes, the villagers pelted them with stones. In response the government clamped curfews on Sakhnin and two neighboring communities, the first time that curfews had ever been imposed within Israeli Arab villages.

"Many of Sakhnin's residents did not know about the sudden curfew, the Arabs claim. Thus early in the morning, when a woman left her house, she was shot without warning. When a neighbor rushed to help her, he was shot dead. Then, according to the villagers, two others were killed.

"Bullet pock marks on the outside and inside of houses along Sakhnin's main street, broken windows, battered cars and splotches of dried blood on the roadway grimly testify to the shootings of the previous day. But there was no way to verify the villagers' version of what triggered the tragedy. The government has stuck to its story that the villagers were attacked only after they had stoned the soldiers and blocked roadways with flaming tires. Probably the truth lies somewhere in between."

Jerusalem's tough action in Galilee last week was denounced by many Israelis. The Communists, as could be expected, called for a no-confidence vote in the Knesset (it was overwhelmingly defeated) and screamed that the government was "a regime of murderers." Tel Aviv's independent daily Ma'ariv called the violence the "blackest day in the history of relations between Jews and Arabs in the state of Israel." Although the government probably overreacted in Galilee, it faces a continuing dilemma: it must be able to respond effectively when troops are harassed by Israel's own citizens; at the same time it must avoid actions that could permanently alienate the growing Arab community.

ARE THEY SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS?