Killer's early release sparks Arab rage

ERIC SILVER on a controversial decision to free an Israeli murderer.

JERUSALEM - Human rights campaigners warned Israel of a Palestinian backlash yesterday after the Supreme Court released a Jewish settler who had served eight years of a life sentence for murdering a bound Palestinian prisoner.

Basem Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, said: "This decision sends a clear message that Arab blood is cheaper than Israeli blood. The Israeli judicial system would not let a Palestinian get off so lightly for killing an Israeli. The lack of symmetry will make Palestinians more and more angry. Israelis will go on suffering as a result of their own policy."

The Arab fury, stoked by the Anglo-American airstrikes on Baghdad, was making itself felt even before the court's verdict. Palestinian gunmen stepped up their attacks on settlers and soldiers during the weekend. Israeli troops returned fire, killing six Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yoram Skolnick, the killer freed yesterday, shot Musa Abu Sabha in 1993 after the 20-year-old Palestinian had tried to stab a West Bank settler. By the time Skolnick, now aged 32, had pumped nine bullets from an Uzi submachinegun into his back, Abu Sabha was under arrest, tied and blindfolded.

The former President Ezer Weizman reduced the penalty to 11 years. A parole board recommended that he be freed for good behaviour after doing two-thirds of his sentence.

By four votes to three, the Supreme Court yesterday rejected an appeal by Israel's Public Committee Against Torture to delay the release, which the human rights group said would send a dangerous message to "ideological Jewish criminals."

Skolnick's wife, Sigalit, said her husband shot Abu Sabha in a "storm of emotion," and was no longer dangerous.

However, the Attorney-General, Elyakim Rubinstein, concluded earlier that Skolnick had not grasped the severity of his crime.

His release comes less than a week after another settler, Nahum Korman, began six months' community service for kicking to death a 10-year-old Palestinian boy who had been throwing stones at Israeli traffic.

B'tselem, an Israeli human rights watchdog, condemned the verdicts in these two cases as an example of Israel closing its eye to the excesses of Jewish settlers, while imposing long sentences, with no prospect of parole, on Palestinians who kill Jews.

"The message of today's decision is that it's not very bad to kill Palestinians," it said.

On the political front, Israel's outgoing Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, is under pressure from the public, the media and his own Labour Party to reject Ariel Sharon's invitation to serve as Defence Minister in a national unity Government.

Hemi Shalev commented in Ma'ariv newspaper yesterday that Barak's credibility had sunk "deep into the sewer."

Even the few remaining Barak loyalists are urging him to think again about joining the man he denounced on the hustings as a warmonger - and not to go back on his announced intention to take a break from politics after his landslide defeat.

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