War On Terrorism

An Israeli soldier
reloads his APC-
mounted machine
gun after a night of
action in the West
Bank town of
Kalkilya last week.

FALLOUT

from page 15

cism that Israel's armored incursions into the seven
Palestinian cities was stirring abroad.
TV footage Monday of the damage and destruc-
tion the IDF had wrought in the two towns and
adjacent refugee camps did little to relieve Israel's
image problem.
And its continued defiance of American demands
that it pull out of all the Palestinian cities — the
others are Ramallah, Kalkilya, Jenin, Nablus and
Tulkarm, all in the West Bank north of Jerusalem —
plainly grated on the Bush administration.
There was speculation that a tentative decision by
Sharon not to attend the United Jewish
Communities' General Assembly in Washington on
Nov. 11 was occasioned by Israeli concerns that he
might not be invited to the White House or might
find himself in a confrontation with President Bush,
especially if Israeli troops have not fully withdrawn
by then.
Sharon informed the White House on Tuesday
that he would not be coming to the United States as
planned because of the security situation in Israel.

Incursion Vs. Visit

Both the media coverage abroad — focusing on the
35-50 Palestinians, among them women and chil-
dren, killed during the incursions — and the public
spat with the Bush team are strikes on the balance
sheet of the military operation.
The Palestinians were doing their utmost to focus
attention on the feuding between Washington and
Jerusalem. But Israeli observers suggested that the
feud was not as bad as portrayed.
For one thing, after the initial heated reaction, the
language used in American statements was relatively
restrained. For another, the spat was confined to
words, with no hint of punitive action. And for a

11/2
2001

16

third, these observers say,
Israel was demonstrating to
the Palestinians and to the
wider region that it has the
strength and guts to stand
up to Washington when its
vital interests are at stake.
In addition, the unrest may
have stirred the beginnings of
real diplomatic activity. The longer the troops stay
inside Palestinian-ruled areas, the more pressure grows
inside the Labor Party to leave the government.
Reflecting these pressures — or perhaps heading
them off— Peres let it be known midweek that he
is drafting a new peace plan to get the diplomatic
process moving again.
According to a report in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, the
plan calls on Israel to withdraw completely from the
Gaza Strip, dismantling settlements where about 7,000
Israelis live amid a hostile Palestinian population.
Peres also envisions a Palestinian state that would
be "political, not military," and the deferment of the
status of Jerusalem for a period of years.
Even Sharon spoke positively of a Palestinian state just
days before Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi was killed.
The assassination effectively ended a string of minor but
positive steps between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority, plunging the region back into violence.
According to the Associated Press, Peres'
spokesman, Yoram Dori, confirmed that the foreign
minister was "preparing a peace plan" to be released
soon. "Whether Sharon agrees or not, he will have
to say," Dori said.
Indeed, some pundits speculated that, if it con-
tains elements Sharon opposes, the Peres plan might
hasten the downfall of the unity government.
Until Peres releases his plan, however, Israelis were
left debating whether the IDF operation really had

Israel Insight

TIM ISSUE

When the United Nations Security Council last
week issued a press release calling for continued
international pressure on Israel to withdraw its
forces from Palestinian Authority cities, some
Detroit-area peace activists argued that that same
body, and not the U.S., should lead the fight
against terrorism.

BEHIND TIM ISSUE

With the addition shortly of terrorist-harboring Syria
to a seat on the Security Council, that body and
other U.N. forums will continue to be suspect in
their support for the war against terrorism, and are
decidedly anti-Israel. From its failure to force
Lebanon to control its border with Israel, leaving the
terrorist Hezbollah to fill the vacuum, to its anti-
Semitic, anti-Israel conference on racism in Durban
earlier this year, the United Nations continues to be
a vehicle for groups having animosity toward the
Jewish state and other Western democracies.

— Allan Gale, Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit

served vital national interests.
Official spokesmen explained last week that the
incursions aimed to arrest or kill terrorists and to
prevent or preempt planned attacks.

Prevention?

Military sources say at least 40 terrorists and suspected
terrorists have been arrested, and some 20 killed in
encounters with elite units. IDF officials initially
claimed that members of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine involved in the Oct. 17 assassi-
nation of Ze'evi were apprehended, though later claims
contradicted that. In any case, the two men believed to
have actually carried out the murder remain at large.
But two drive-by terror shootings on Sunday — one,
in Hadera, killed four women and injured dozens of
other people, and the other killed a soldier — undercut
the assertion that IDF occupation of Palestinian cities
is effective in blocking assaults. The killers in the two
attacks came from Tulkarm and Jenin.
The first killing was claimed by Palestinian
Authority leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, the
second by Islamic Jihad.
The claims reflect widespread resistance to Arafat's
public orders ro the various Palestinian military and
paramilitary groupings, and to the opposition fac-
tions, that it was in the Palestinians' national interest
to observe a cease-fire. But in another major
address, to trade unionists in Gaza, Arafat gave pre-
cisely the opposite message, calling on the
Palestinians "to continue fighting, fighting, deter-
minedly and forcefully."
Arafat's cease-fire call could be seen as a success for
the Israeli operation, especially if the cease-fire does
take hold at least on some of the fronts. Israel says
its troops will withdraw from the other cities one by
one when each is quiet.
But Arafat repeatedly has spurned Israel's demand
to hand over Ze'evi's killers. Israel has received no
real backing from the United States or the rest of the
international community for the demand, which
many see as an unrealistic stumbling block ro the
diplomatic process.
At best, Israel may make do with a proposed,
vague international monitoring mechanism designed
to ensure that terrorists arrested by the Palestinian
Authority do not shortly walk out the other side of a
"revolving door." Israeli sources say arrests Arafat has
made, and trumpeted to the media, are mostly of
PFLP "pensioners" who long ago ceased being active
members of the terrorist group. Of those on a most-
wanted list Israel submitted some weeks ago, almost
all remain free — though at least two have met their
deaths in violent circumstances believed to be of
Israel's doing.
Politically, the operation in the West Bank seems
to have benefitted Sharon. Its scope seems to have
assuaged Ze'evi's National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu
faction, which has indefinitely deferred an earlier
decision to quit the government.
On Tuesday, Knesset member Benny Elon took
over as Ze'evi's replacement in the Tourism Ministry.
For Sharon, fighting to hold his coalition together
and ward off incessant criticism from his Likud
Parry rival Binyamin Netanyahu, this is a gratifying
development.