Israeli deserter kills 4 Arabs on bus

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli army deserter opened fire on a bus in northern Israel yesterday, killing four Israeli Arabs in an attack that police said they believe was aimed at disrupting a government plan to dismantle settlements in the Gaza Strip this month.

An enraged mob set upon the gunman and beat him to death after the shootings, which wounded at least a dozen passengers.

The military identified the attacker as Eden Natan-Zada, a 19-year-old former soldier who deserted in June to avoid participating in the settler evacuation. He boarded an afternoon bus in northern Israel and began shooting when it reached the Israeli Arab town of Shfaram, authorities said. Witnesses said the gunman, dressed in an army uniform and carrying an automatic rifle, shot the driver first, then sprayed the inside of the bus with gunfire.

The attack was one of the deadliest by an Israeli on Palestinian civilians in years, and it followed predictions by security services that some opponents of the Gaza withdrawal would take extreme measures to prevent it as the Aug. 17 starting date approaches. In particular, Israeli authorities have said, opponents might launch attacks on Palestinians to draw reprisals against Israelis and reignite fighting between the two sides -- perhaps forcing the government to reconsider the plan.

The military and police, already spread thin trying to prevent protesters from slipping into the Gaza Strip, said yesterday's attack would force them to divert troops to other Israeli-Palestinian flashpoints and to brace for possible riots in Israel's Arab towns.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned the bus shootings as a ''reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist." Settler leaders in the West Bank and Gaza, who have organized large demonstrations aimed at thwarting the evacuation, said it only harmed their cause by tarnishing their image.

In Shfaram, witnesses described a scene of carnage on bus No. 165, and an explosion of anger at the gunman after the attack at 5:30 p.m.

''The first thing I saw was the driver hunched over the wheel and I saw two bodies near him," Ashkar Elias, a Shfaram resident who watched from the curb as the shooting took place, said on Israeli Television. Two women were among the shooting victims on the bus, Elias said.

He said a crowd of passengers and onlookers rushed the gunman and beat him with stones. Mohammed Barakeh, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset who lives in Shfaram, said Israeli security should have been disarming extremists, many of whom carry weapons issued by the army.

''The writing was on the wall," he told reporters at the scene. ''We are witnessing attempts by extreme right-wing people, terrorists, who want to set the region ablaze and feel they have freedom of action."

The military said Natan-Zada grew up in Rishon Letzion, a middle-class town south of Tel Aviv. A police spokesman said he had been living in the Tapuach settlement since he deserted from the army two months ago.

Tapuach is one of the most militant Jewish settlements in the West Bank, populated largely by followers of the late Meir Kahane, a rabbi who advocated the mass deportation of Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries.

Jewish settlers in Gaza and the West Bank have spearheaded efforts to thwart the withdrawal, which includes the dismantling of all 21 settlements in Gaza and four more in the northern West Bank. Opponents of the plan say it is a capitulation to Palestinian violence over the past five years.

Their protests have drawn thousands of government opponents, and several hundred have managed to slip into the settlements that are slated for evacuation, despite tight security.

Many settlers and their supporters plan to resist soldiers and police officers sent to remove residents. But leaders of the main settlement movement have vowed not to resort to violence.

''Such incidents cannot be part of the democratic struggle in Israel," a settler leader, Bentsi Lieberman, said to reporters near the Gaza Strip, where thousands have protested in recent days.

The demonstrations have tied up thousands of police officers and soldiers, who deployed near Gaza to prevent them from reaching settlements to be evacuated.

Police used army helicopters yesterday to fly troops from the protest near Gaza to northern Israel after the shooting in Shfaram, according to Israel Radio.

Security forces also raised the alert level in parts of the West Bank and Gaza, the radio said.

Shfaram, about a 90-minute drive from Tel Aviv, is one of several large Arab towns in northern Israel. Its 30,000 residents include Muslims, Christians, and Druze.

Leaders of the Israeli-Arab community, who make up about 18 percent of Israel's population, announced a strike in Israel's Arab sector in response to the shooting and called for a protest today in Nazareth.

Yossi Alpher, a political analyst and a former officer in one of Israel's security agencies, said the bus shooting highlights problems in Israel's police force.

''One of the most painful aspects of what we're seeing played out in recent months is that our police force is woefully small," Alpher said in an interview. ''It's one of the smallest per capita in the Western world."

Alpher said the attack probably would not affect the withdrawal. But multiple attacks by extremists against Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza could undermine Sharon's plan.

''Imagine a bunch of extremists like this in different place in the West Bank and Gaza massacring as many Palestinians as they can. The reaction would be something akin to war. It could certainly break the rhythm of the disengagement," he said.