on the main West Bank and Gaza towns and refugee camps. We also imposed a

on the main West Bank and Gaza towns and refugee camps. We also imposed a curfew on Kiryat Arba and, for the first time, were given the authority to use administrative detention orders not just against Palestinians, but specific Jewish settlers. We arrested about a half-dozen leaders of Kach, the far-right, anti-Arab political movement founded by the American Rabbi Meir Kahane, of which Baruch Goldstein had also been a member. Still, there were repeated clashes anyway — and dozens of deaths as a result — before things finally began to subside a week or so later. The massacre had made me feel more strongly than ever that our responsibility to protect the security of the settlers could not extend to allowing them to defy the government or the law. The principle would be put to the test within a few weeks. A settlement near Hebron, called Tel Rumeida, had been set up without government approval in 1984. As part of the response to Goldstein killings, Rabin was thinking of closing it down. That prompted a number of right-wing rabbis to issue a formal religious ruling against any such action. Rabin called me in to ask whether it would be operationally possible to dismantle Tel Rumeida and remove the settlers. I said yes, by sending in a Sayeret Matkal force after midnight, as long as news of the operation did not leak ahead of time. “We'll take over the area, close it off and get control.” Given the tensions in the wake of the massacre, I did add that I couldn’t promise that our soldiers would hold fire. “There are people in there with weapons,” I said. “If someone shoots at them, they will shoot back.” “Should | do it?” he asked me. Maybe I should have given him an answer. But I didn’t feel it was my place to add to the pressures around what was clearly a finely balanced call, especially since my inclination would have been to tell him to go ahead. I said it was something only he could decide. “What I can tell you is that we can do it.” When I left, my sense was that he was sufficiently angry over what had happened in Hebron that he felt it essential to draw a line — the line of law — over what settlers were allowed to do. But the Passover holiday was now a couple of days away. I think what happened is that he realized the operation would not be possible until after the holiday period. By then, he was concerned he would have lost the clear political logic for moving against Tel Rumeida. The settlement has remained in place, a flashpoint in the conflict between settlers and Palestinians in the area around Hebron. The wider repercussions, and the controversy, from the massacre reverberated widely. Rabin and his cabinet immediately decided to establish an inquiry, under Supreme Court Chief Justice Meir Shamgar. It would look into 259 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011730