TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 31 -- The killings Sunday of the leader of a militant Jewish organization and his wife, and of a Palestinian leader pushed President Clinton's peace plan to the brink of failure and the Middle East on verge of yet more violence in the new year.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday that if the Palestinians rejected President Clinton's proposals as a basis for continuing peace talks, Israel would move toward "a unilateral separation," meaning Israel would decide what parts of the occupied territories it keeps, move to that line, and hold it even by force rather than try to compromise with the Palestinians.
Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said Sunday that Israel had two options: A unilateral departure and a unilateral separation, or an agreed one as result of diplomatic negotiations.
"There is no other way," he said.
Barak told the Cabinet that Palestinian acceptance of Clinton's proposals would enable a continuation of the negotiating process. Clinton proposed dividing the city between the Jews and the Arabs.
Israel would, however, reject the Palestinian demand for a right of return for their refugees, and Barak said he would not sign any document that transfers sovereignty over the Temple Mount to the Palestinians. The Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest site and is Islam's third-holiest shrine.
Meanwhile in Israel, thousands paid their last respects to the leader a militant Jewish organization and his wife who were shot near the West Bank settlement of Ofra. They chanted "Death to the Arabs," and carried yellow flags of his banned organization. Some broke into Jewish stores along the funeral route and beat up Arab employees.
The attacks symbolized the fear of a fresh -- and worse -- outburst of violence after Palestinian gunmen killed Binyamin Zeev Kahane, the leader of a Jewish militant group bearing his family's name, and his wife, Talia. Their four daughters were hurt in the attack.
Also, in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, a leading member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement was shot dead by an Israeli army undercover unit outside his home. The victim, Thabet Thabet, 45, was an employee at one of the Palestinian authority's ministries and also head of Fatah security in Tulkarem. He died in hospital.
Arafat's advisor Nabil Abu Rudeineh accused Israel of targeting Palestinians since the clashes first began Sept. 28.
"These aggressive assassinations would lead to catastrophic reactions and serious results and would destroy all the Arab and international efforts to revive and save the stalled peace process," Abu Rudeineh told reporters.
The Israeli Defense Forces spokesman did not comment on Palestinian claims that an undercover military unit had killed the man.
However, Channel 2 TV said Thabet was a Tanzim paramilitary activist.
Barak said later the army "has been operating as we see today and in recent weeks, very effectively, in varied ways...against the direct perpetrators of attacks and also against those who send them."
In Jerusalem, fiery speeches preceded the 7-hour-long Kahane funeral. One prominent member of the Kahane group, Michael Ben-Horin, blasted the government for recently destroying a wall near the site of the attack.
"That was the price for a father, a mother, orphans," he said. "Thirty meters from them there is a house. You didn't touch the house. You are encouraging the Arabs to kill."
Another prominent supporter, Shmuel Sacket, urged people to join them.
"There is a war here," he shouted. "The people want the Arabs out, but are afraid to say so. We've got to see you with us tonight, tomorrow, the day after, next week, until the victory, until there won't be one Arab in our state."
Extremists attacked Arabs along their route. Near the prime minister's official residence they broke into a supermarket and attacked four Arab workers. Police chased the extremists inside the store while horse-mounted officers tried to keep the crowds outside from breaking in.
Police said it had rescued several Arabs and that 10 officers were hurt. One policeman was slightly wounded when hundreds of extremists tried to beat up Arab workers in a falafel stand. Other policemen were attacked after sunset near the entrance to Jerusalem when extremists attacked drivers who looked Arab to them. Police detained attackers, but the attackers' friends stoned the officers to secure their release. Nine rioters were reportedly arrested.
Jewish shop owners were also hurt when they tried to protect their Arab employees, police reported. Rioters attacked Channel 2 TV and army radio mobile stations sent there to cover the funeral.
Kahane supporters have often demonstrated near sites of violent attacks carrying placards saying, "Kahane was right" and shouting "Death to the Arabs."
The Kahanes were killed early Sunday. A spokesman for the Israeli police in the West Bank said that at least two people armed with Kalishnakov rifles fired dozens of bullets at their car from the Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud.
Binyamin Zeev Kahane, 33, was instantly killed. A bullet hit the head of his wife, Talia, and she died later, in a hospital. Their car crashed, injuring the couples' four daughters. One of them, a four-year-old girl, was unconscious because of a head injury, the Hadassah Hospital reported.
Sunday's attack raised fears of retaliation.
Barak sharply condemned the attack.
"No kind of violence against Israeli citizens will break our strength or be rewarded," he said. "The murderers will not get away with it."
One of the group's activists, Tiran Pollack, who has a record of run-ins with police, Sunday talked of having a heart boiling, furious, injured, bleeding. Pollack said the revenge must account for all murders.
"If we want Jewish blood not to be cheap, the Arabs must know that for every hair of a Jew that falls, the head of an Arab will fall," he said.
Prof. Ehud Shprinzak, an expert on extreme movements, said he believed the Israeli General Security Services kept close tabs on the Kahane people, but a former senior GSS commander, Shimon Romah said the deterioration could be "terrible."
Romah concurred that the Kahane followers' capabilities were limited, but said all it needed was "one madman" to ignite the area. The country is awash with arms and ammunition and almost anyone can obtain a weapon through a third person, he said. Romah said he feared an Israeli attack in Hebron, a religious site, or a mass attack would prompt a Palestinian retaliation.
"The Palestinians haven't exhausted their capabilities at this time, they have arms," he noted.
A former head of the Jewish branch in the General Security Service, Hezi Kalo, said he was concerned also because right wing groups were anxious over concessions the government was ready to make for peace, including ceding sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Some right wings extremists have been hinting that Barak was a traitor and ought to be fought, arousing memories of the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right wing extremist in an attempt to scuttle the peace process.
The Council of Settlers in the occupied territories said Sunday that Barak and Ben-Ami were, "personally responsible" for the attack.
"As long as the two court Arafat and negotiate with the murderer Dahalan (the head of the Palestinian Preventive security in Gaza), they broadcast a green light to terror and encourage the murder of Jews," the settlers said.
Sunday's killing of the Palestinian leader was the first of a high-ranking official member of a Palestinian movement. It came a day after Fatah called for two weeks of intensified protests to mark the 36th anniversary of its founding.
"Fighting and resistance are Fatah's choices," said the group's Secretary General Ahmed Helles in Gaza Sunday. "We are able to make Israeli losses higher in Tel Aviv, Gaza, West Bank or elsewhere as long as Israel continues its policy of aggressions and assassinations."
He was addressing thousands of Fatah leaders and supporters who gathered to demand more confrontations with Israel on the group's 36th anniversary.
"Continue your great Intifada and confront the Israel military occupation," Helles said as armed Fatah members -- their faces covered with black masks -- fired their marching guns into the air.
"We consider ourselves in a state of Jihad and resistance until we remove the (Israeli) occupation and establish our independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," Helles said.
"The assassinations will never scare us," Helles, who is better known as Abu Maher, said. "The sieges, closures and helicopter gunships would never make us change our minds to stop the resistance."
Sunday's killings came three days after a bomb attack on a Tel Aviv bus injured 14 Israelis, and after two security men died trying to defuse a bomb in the Gaza Strip. Radio reports said the Israeli security services had detained 15 Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks against Israeli targets.
More than 350 people have been killed since the violence erupted, the vast majority of them Palestinian.
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