JERUSALEM — Israel has embarked on a new strategy in its effort to convince Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to end the violence and return to the negotiating table: seize or destroy Palestinian property. It also positioned tanks to forcibly end routine Palestinian shooting at the residents of Gilo in southeastern Jerusalem.
The new get-tough approach followed two suicide attacks in three days. The first bomber killed 15 Jews — including six children — and wounded 130 others last Thursday in Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria, and the other blew himself up and injured 30 Israelis on the patio of the Wall Street restaurant outside of Haifa on Sunday.
“Whoever chooses the path of terror will also pay a political price,” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed Tuesday. “If the violence continues, the Palestinians will lose additional assets and they have plenty to lose.”
Uzi Landau, Israel’s internal security minister, said Israel was “pushed by the events to step up measures to protect its population. Our restraint policy for the last 10 months has resulted in around 160 casualties and many more people who were left crippled and injured, among them babies and kids on their way to school.”
The prime minister “is very wisely trying to maintain a balance,” he observed. “On the one hand he is trying to preserve the unity of the government, and at the same time he is moving in the right direction to combat terrorism. Some would argue that it should be at a more vigorous pace.
“But in the cabinet there are two schools of thought. [Foreign Minister Shimon] Peres sees the Palestinians as a partner and believes that the Oslo Accords are going to bring us peace. Others believe that Arafat is a partner of [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein.”
Landau scoffed when asked about Sharon permitting Peres to negotiate a cease-fire with the Palestinians in return for not bolting the coalition government.
“I don’t believe in negotiating for a cease-fire,” he bristled. “They must simply stop.”
In the aftermath of the Jerusalem attack, Israeli forces used F-16 fighter jets to destroy the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank police headquarters in Ramallah. More significantly, Jerusalem police seized the authority’s unofficial but symbolic East Jerusalem headquarters, Orient House, and nine buildings in nearby Abu Dis that served as the PLO’s military and political headquarters.
On Monday, Israeli tanks responded to the second suicide bombing by pushing a little more than a mile into the West Bank city of Jenin — an area entirely under Palestinian control — and that Israel considers a breeding ground for terrorists. Israel Defense Force destroyed a security post and the Palestinian police station, where the Jerusalem suicide bomber had worked as a police officer until a few months ago. They retreated after three hours, saying they had not responded to Palestinian gunfire.
Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian information minister, called the IDF action “a dangerous precedent” and a “grave escalation of Ariel Sharon’s government against the Palestinian people. This is the first such invasion of a Palestinian-controlled city since the signing of the Oslo Accords.”
Hours later, Palestinians in Beit Jala began a six-hour firefight with Israeli troops stationed in Gilo to protect the community. Shortly after the fighting ended, Sharon vowed that Gilo would never be attacked again and hours later Israeli tanks surrounded Beit Jala. The move was widely applauded across the Israeli political landscape, with some leaders saying it should have been done a long time ago.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said he postponed an actual incursion into Beit Jala after learning that Arafat had made a concerted effort to stop the shooting. He denied that pressure from Peres or the Bush administration — which only hours earlier strongly criticized Israel’s brief foray into Jenin — played a role.
And President Bush this week rejected suggestions that his administration take a more active role in the Middle East, insisting that it has been “engaged” since he took office, citing a secretary of state deputy, David Satterfield, who swung through the region just this week.
Bush has repeatedly called on both sides to end the violence, but saved his strongest words for Arafat, saying: “It is very important for Mr. Arafat to show 100 percent effort.”
Those words were welcomed by David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank.
“Israel has made clear that this is not the time for an American initiative,” he said. “Arafat needs to arrest these [terrorists]. I think Bush is doing the right thing in making clear where the blame is.”
He said the United States must convince European nations that until Arafat “seriously tackles the issue of terrorism, he will not be invited to 10 Downing Street [in London] or to Berlin or other European capitals. He has played Europe off the U.S. and the world now has to unite and say no more.”
But Henry Siegman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Israel and the Palestinians are incapable of resolving the conflict themselves and that “they need a powerful, influential third party to do it.” Yet the Bush administration, he said, “has essentially decided to let them kill each other and only step in when they get tired of it. That’s a very dangerous solution for the people in the region, and for this country’s interests.”
Siegman said Arafat runs the risk of a civil war if he tries to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and that Israel has to offer him “something significant. He is not going to do it just to make the occupation more comfortable for the Sharon government.” He suggested that Israel promise to pull back its forces to where they were before the violence began almost 11 months ago, end the closure of the territories and enter into a “serious return to the peace process. Arafat cannot be expected to [make arrests] if the best he can hope for” is another Oslo.
Siegman was also pessimistic about Peres’ chances of success, saying that as long as Sharon insists on seven days of quiet before implementing the Mitchell peace plan, “Peres is wasting his time.”
In another development, Israeli snipers early Wednesday reportedly killed a leading member of Arafat’s Tanzim militia who was said to be responsible for several shootings of Israelis in the Hebron area.
A poll of Israelis by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University at the end of July found that 70 percent supported such killings and 63 percent believe Israel uses too little force against the Palestinians. The poll also found 62 percent are against Israelis seeking their own revenge against Palestinians, and 60 percent said they don’t expect peace in the coming years, although 59 percent favor negotiations.
A CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll conducted Aug. 10-12 found that fully 64 percent of Americans do not believe there will ever be a time when Israel lives in peace with its Arab neighbors — the highest percentage since the question was first asked in 1997. It found also that 41 percent of respondents were more sympathetic to Israel — only 13 percent sided with the Arabs; and 65 percent do not believe the United States should take a more active role in seeking a diplomatic solution to end the violence in the Middle East.