March 1992, Page 42

Special Report

Motive a Mystery in West Bank Murder of American Archeologist

By the Reverend L. Humphrey Walz

The motive for the Jan. 19 assassination of American Professor Albert Ernest Glock in the West Bank village of Bir Zeit, near Ramallah, 12 miles north of Jerusalem, remains as obscure as the explanations offered by Israeli authorities for the problems they created for his funeral three days later on Jan. 22, Idaho-born Glock, an ordained Lutheran minister, headed the Palestinian Institute of Archeology of Anglican-founded Bir Zeit University (BZU), where he had served on the faculty for 16 years.

The 67-year-old archeologist also was a former director of the Albright Institute of Archeology (formerly the American School for Oriental Research) near Herod's Gate, in East Jerusalem. He was renowned for his skill in synthesizing the knowledge gained from scattered archeological discoveries into scholarly reconstructions of Palestinian history and culture. As Ghada Turjman wrote in the Jan. 27 Palestinian daily Al-Fajr, "He helped preserve Palestinian heritage, which is under constant threat of extinction due to the unending Israeli occupation."

No one saw the shooting, which took place after the Rev. Dr. Glock had driven to the home of a research assistant, parked his car and was walking to the front door. He first was shot twice at point-blank range in the back of the skull and in the neck. Then, after he fell forward, the assassin apparently turned him onto his back and shot him a third time through the heart.

The entire household heard the shots, but assumed it was "just the army." One family member did come to the door in time to see the back of a man going out the gate and into a road above the house. The police, who did not arrive until some three hours later, have not yet determined the masked killer's identity. The placing of the bullets and the speed with which the killer escaped, however, suggest a professional "hit" job rather than an angry attack by an Israeli settler or by a Palestinian taking out on a random American his bitterness toward U.S. policies.

Events surrounding the Jan. 22 funeral add to the mystery. The Israeli military governor had promised to life the tight Ramallah area curfew by noon to permit attendance at the 12:30 p.m. service at the Lutheran Church on the Mount of Olives, in East Jerusalem. Instead, Ramallah was kept under curfew for the entire day, troops closed the road from Bir Zeit, and in a quick series of raids took some 50 Palestinians from their homes to "detention" without formal charges or prospect of trial.

After the funeral, the hearse and cortege, bound for the Ramallah cemetary and the Lutheran parish church where a traditional Palestinian reception for condolences was being prepared, were blocked by soldiers and military vehicles from proceeding on any but one heavily guarded road.

So many mourners were thus kept from the obsequies that friends asked the Albright Institute to permit a memorial gathering there on the following day, to enable friends and colleagues to offer condolences to Dr. Glock's wife and two of his children who had traveled from the U.S. for the funeral. The Institute refused, saying it would be "politically too sensitive." This tended to reinforce the conviction of many Palestinian scholars that the Institute's board has increasingly come to be dominated by American Zionists since the 1967 Israeli conquest and annexation of East Jerusalem. In any case, Israeli police spokeswoman Tami Paul-Cohen said there was no evidence the murder had anything to do with politics.

The Israeli practice of barring reporters or photographers not accompanied by Israeli officials from the occupied territories has made this statement difficult to verify.

There is, as yet, no evidence that Israeli authorities had any part in the murder. There remains, nonetheless, the nagging suspicion among both Palestinians and Americans who knew Prof. Glock that the Israeli government is the only obvious gainer from the death of a specialist in Palestinian archeology who added so much to the stature of BZU.

The feeling that Israeli authorities are going all-out to delegitimize any non-Jewish historic claims to any part of today's Holy Land came to a boil only four days before Glock's murder. On Jan. 15, nine patriarchs and heads of Christian denominations in Jerusalem threatened to appeal to world opinion if the government didn't put a stop to obliteration of Christian remains under new construction (see "Jerusalem Journal," page 23). Their joint statement was triggered by the burial, under new road and housing projects, of the vestiges of two monastic complexes at St. Stephen's near the Damascus Gate and the Byzantine-era St. George's near the Jaffa Gate.

Increasingly, even small groups of students and faculty members trying to keep the educational process alive off campus are being harassed. On Jan. 11, BZU students staying at the El-Bireh YMCA were raided by Israeli Border Guards, who beat YMCA staff members and smashed windows. At midnight, Jan. 14, armed settlers vandalized the home of BZU engineering professor Riyad Malki in the presence of soldiers, who did not intervene. On Jan. 22, the day of the Glock funeral, and subsequently, Israeli authorities conducted raids in Ramallah, El Bireh and Bir Zeit, arresting at least eight BZU students and "detaining" BZU staff members, including biochemistry professor Jad Mikhail, engineering technician Adil Hidmi, Ali Hassouna of Student Service, and architecture lecturer Khalil Abu Arafah.

All of these events, plus a stepped-up level of troop and settler violence and break-ins into mosques, homes, and international service offices are attributed by Americans living and working in the area to a determination at the highest levels of Israeli government to provoke the Palestinian delegation into withdrawing from the Middle East peace talks.

As proof, these observers cite the fact that on Jan. 16, just three hours after his name was submitted to the U.S. Consulate for participation in the Palestinian delegation to the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace talks, YMCA counselor Mohammed Hourani was placed under "administrative detention." And the tightening of the curfew in Ramallah on Jan. 22 coincided with the scheduled return of peace delegate Hanan Ashrawi from Washington to her home there.

The Reverend L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., is a retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast.

< Prev		Next >