Testing Time
As Sharon returns from Washington, Israelis expect moment of reckoning.
Islamic Jihad members burn Israeli flags at the end of a rally protesting Israel's travel restrictions.
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
srael seemed to be holding its breath this
week in the wake of three Palestinian attacks.
The reaction wasn't born of fear, but rather a
sense that the moment of reckoning is at
hand as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returns from
his first trip to Washington.
Israel didn't respond to any of this week's three
serious attacks — on orders, according to reliable
sources, from Sharon himself, who was eager to belie
his warmonger image when meeting with President
Bush and other U.S. officials.
It's hard to call the six weeks since Sharon's elec-
tion a honeymoon — the Palestinians have done
their best to fulfill their pledge to greet him with
violence — but the sense in Israel is that this was
about as warm a reception as Sharon is going to get.
The premier was due back in Israel by the week-
end, amid speculation that Israel's pent-up fury
would then be unleashed.
Reprisals would be the first manifestation of a
toughened policy under the new government. If they
do not come, the inaction may be a clue of Sharon's
intentions — and, perhaps, of how he has been affect-
ed by the Bush administration's calls for restraint.
I
3/23
2001
24
Three Attacks
The first of this week's attacks took place at Kibbutz
Manara on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Several days
after the man responsible for security on the kib-
butz, Yitzhak Kvartatz, disappeared, he was found
murdered in a nearby riverbed. Manara's arsenal,
which Kvartatz oversaw, had been ransacked — and
some 60 rifles and handguns stolen.
The Lebanon border fence, just yards away, was
not cut, leading investigators to assume that
Palestinian or Israeli Arab terrorists were responsible
for the attack.
The second attack came Sunday night, when
Palestinian militants fired three mortar bombs from
the Gaza Strip into Israel in what Israeli security
forces described as a grave escalation of the conflict.
The attack marked the first time Palestinians had
fired from Gaza into Israel proper — as opposed to
Israeli settlements within Gaza — since the violence
began nearly six months ago.
An Israeli reserve soldier was lightly wounded b y
the shells, which landed in an army base next to
Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
Israel Defense Force sources said the shells came
from places in or near Palestinian Authority police
installations. The implication is that the shells could
not have been fired without the connivance, or at
least deliberate indifference, of the Palestinian police
who were ordered an hour before the attack to
take cover for fear of Israeli retaliation.
The third attack came the following morning,
Monday, when an Israeli driver was killed in a drive-by
shooting near Bethlehem. After being shot, 58-year-old
Baruch Cohen, a resident of the West Bank settlement of
Efrat, lost control of his car and hit an oncoming truck.
Israeli officials believe the assailants, who carried
out the attack in broad daylight, escaped to
Bethlehem, passing at least two Palestinian Authority
roadblocks along the way.
As with the Gaza mortar attack, Israeli officials
said the shooting reeked of P.A. complicity.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said the
`'finger of guilt" points directly at Palestinian
Authority President Yasser Arafat.
The Israel Defense Force responded Monday by
reimposing a blockade around Bethlehem. The block-
ade had just been lifted as part of Sharon's effort to ease
the plight of the Palestinian population. On Tuesday,
however, the blockade was eased once again, with roads
to the south and east of the city opened by the army.
In this case, as in the shelling of Nahal Oz, the
prime minister rejected urgent recommendations for
reprisals against Palestinian military targets.
Both Sharon in the United States and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres in Jerusalem cited these inci-
dents as proof of Israeli claims that the PA., through
its military and paramilitary units, is not just indirectly
responsible but directly involved in attacks on Israelis.
Secret Strategy
Sharon promised in his election campaign to provide
greater security for Israel. He will achieve this, he
has said, by striking at the P.A. and its military and
paramilitary units rather than by collective acts that
hurt the entire Palestinian population.
This explains Sharon's easing of the blockades
imposed on much of the Palestinian territory in
recent weeks, which had drawn strong condemna-
tion from the international community and from
Western media, especially in Europe.
Aides stressed that the sieges had been in place
when Sharon took the reins of power, and it was
Sharon who gave orders to ease them.
Though the Palestinians and the international
community had demanded that Israel take the first
step in reducing the cycle of antagonism, the
Israeli move was met not with Palestinian goodwill
but with a new wave of violence. Sharon's aides
emphasized the prime minister's sympathy for
ordinary Palestinians, who have been rendered
increasingly destitute by the half year of violence.
They also insist that Sharon has new, untried tacti-
cal ideas to use against terror.
Having swept Sharon into power, the Israeli public
is waiting eagerly for the realization of his promise of
greater security.
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