Tragic but simple: that was Israel's official characterization of last month's massacre of Muslim worshippers in Hebron. The killer, a Jewish settler, was portrayed as a singular lunatic acting alone. The episode, it was said, could not have been foreseen or prevented, and Israeli security forces responded properly. But after two weeks of hearings by a state commission examining the slaughter, it does not look so elementary anymore. Baruch Goldstein, the Hebron triggerman, is no longer the sole subject of suspicion, now that witnesses say a second man may have been involved. More broadly, an entire national mind-set that enabled settlers to run amuck with shocking ease is on trial.
While the U.S. struggled last week to contain the consequences of the massacre and bring the P.L.O. back to the negotiating table, the commission of inquiry kept turning up evidence casting doubt on Israel's original version of events. Two soldiers on duty at the mosque admitted they had opened fire in the direction of the fleeing worshippers, though they said they did not hit anyone. Their statements directly contradicted the army's contention that soldiers fired only in the air and lent weight to claims by Palestinian eyewitnesses that soldiers were responsible for at least one of the 29 deaths. Then the same soldiers cast doubts on the army's conclusion that Goldstein acted on his own. They testified that Goldstein entered the mosque carrying an M-16 rifle, not the Israeli-made Glilon (a shortened Galil assault rifle) that the army claimed fired all the shots inside the mosque. One of the soldiers said that another man entered the shrine shortly after Goldstein, with a Glilon. That aroused suspicion that Goldstein had an accomplice, as some Palestinians have contended.
On Friday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned the Hebron massacre, and Syria, Jordan and Lebanon agreed to resume their negotiations with Israel. Though the P.L.O. still wanted "concrete measures" to protect Palestinians before it went back to the bargaining table, it agreed to a high- level meeting with Israel this week in Tunis.
Many Israelis were worrying almost as much about their country's behavior. Testimony has pointed to considerable official negligence. Security procedures were surprisingly lax at a shrine that has been a notorious flash point for tensions. Authorities did not take seriously the threat of settler mayhem, although warning signs were plentiful. And many were asking whether the security forces overreacted in the aftermath of the massacre. Before it is even completed, the inquiry is raising the specter of high-level resignations.
For many citizens, the most dismaying revelation came at the beginning of the hearings from Deputy Commander Meir Tayar, who heads the paramilitary border police unit in Hebron. Standing orders, he said, forbade security forces from firing on Jewish settlers under any circumstances. He explained that if a settler opened fire, instructions were to "take cover and wait for the clip to finish, then stop him in some other way, not by shooting."