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Archive
from the March 01, 1994 edition Have Mobile Phone, Will Oppose Mideast Peace
Peter Ford in Jerusalem
WHEN Baruch Marzel, head of the extreme anti-Arab Kach movement,
goes underground to escape arrest, he takes a weapon with him. Not a gun, like most of his fellow settlers. The Army took away
his firearm license a long time ago, saying he could not be
trusted. Instead, Mr. Marzel, who wears the trademark tangled black
beard and knitted skullcap of the militant Jewish settler, packs a
mobile phone. That way he can stay in touch with the press as he tries to keep
out of the way of the Army and police. They have been hunting him
since the government launched its crackdown on Kach, the group to
which Baruch Goldstein, the man who gunned down praying
Palestinians on Friday, belonged. From ``somewhere'' - he would not be more specific - and over a
very poor connection that suggested his telephone battery might
have been wearing down, Marzel railed to The Monitor about the
``Bolshevik government'' that Saturday issued an administrative
detention order against him. Such an order, generally used against Palestinians, allows up to
six months' imprisonment without trial. ``Because they cannot do
anything through the court system they are trying to shut our
mouths like this,'' Marzel complained. ``It's an antidemocratic
move.'' Kach officials are not known for their love of democracy. The
party, founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, was banned by the Israeli
Supreme Court from contesting the 1988 and 1992 elections because
of its openly racist stance: Kach advocates expelling all the
750,000 Arab citizens of Israel, as well as all Palestinians in the
Israeli-occupied territories. Kach probably has fewer than 100 militants, most of them living
in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, like Marzel and
Goldstein, or in the nearby town of Hebron. They may not be there for long. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres warned yesterday that ``we will not allow a small group of
crazy people to kill our future, to kill our morale, to kill our
prospects, or to kill a single person who is innocent.... We shall
take away their weapons, and if necessary their right to remain
where they are,'' he declared. Marzel, meanwhile, has few illusions
that he will be able to stay out of police hands for very long. He
said, before the line broke completely, ending the interview, that
he planned to try to spend a few more days on the run ``to express
my views to the media and to my friends, and then they will put me
under arrest.'' Once in jail, he said, he will go on hunger strike.
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