| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011730)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011730" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2798 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 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 I 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 |
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