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COMMENTARY
December 4, 2001
That sinking feeling
I may have lost count but I think this is Yasser Arafat's 191st "last chance". It was declared by several in the Bush administration yesterday; the president himself has tired of the phrase. It was confirmed by Shimon Peres and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer the Israeli foreign and defence ministers in briefings last night but without any kind of enthusiasm. In Israel the number of people still prepared to believe a word Mr. Arafat says can be counted on the fingers of one elbow and that includes Israeli Arabs. The bus-bombing in Haifa was the last straw not only because it followed within hours of the double-suicide bombing in a downtown Jerusalem mall but because it was so obviously designed to set Jewish Israelis at Arab Israeli throats in a city that has enjoyed better relations between the two communities than any in the country. (This didn't work; many Jewish residents of Haifa were quoted in the Israeli media saying No one from around here could have done that. ) It was Mr. Arafat who decided to resume the Intifada last year; it is Mr. Arafat who writes the sweet letters of condolence to the families of suicide bombers and puts them on state pension; it is Mr. Arafat who is openly playing good cop/bad cop with Hamas and other terrorist organizations he refuses to outlaw. His public statements in Arabic are now being systematically translated into English for the edification of the Western world; as Israelis have long known they vary in both substance and style from what he says in English to Western statesmen and media; and vary again from what he says to Muslim leaders and to his pan-Arab audience. His response to the attacks on Jerusalem and Haifa were in character. He made refulgent remarks in English condemning them and expressing his sorrow at the loss of life; then in Arabic told his people that they must trust him to deal with dark Israeli plots. He did a quick round-up of more than a hundred Hamas and other terrorist rank-and-file who are even now being processed through the revolving doors of the Palestine Authority's prisons. The more serious terrorists he left under "house arrest" not wishing to disturb them too deeply. The trick he is now trying to play is too obvious even for his usual European apologists. From the moment the new U.S. "peace envoy" Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni arrived on Nov. 26 the number of terrorist hits on Israel spiked up sharply. This is what has always happened at the beginning of every new attempt at negotiating peace; it is Mr. Arafat's idea of how to improve his bargaining position. Unfortunately for him and for his associates in Fatah Hamas Palestinian Jihad and Hezbollah he has finally and seriously miscalculated. With Ariel Sharon in power in Israel and the whole country demanding retaliation on a generous scale; with George W. Bush in power in Washington and the American public no longer indifferent -- Mr. Arafat has forfeited his room for manoeuvre. And yet it would appear that Messrs. Sharon and Bush agreed privately Sunday to give him one last chance. Mr. Sharon incidentally took no one with him into the hour-long meeting with the U.S. president before flying back to Israel to preside over an emergency cabinet meeting that began at the Lod airport. But from the nature of Israeli strikes yesterday and the statements coming from all sides of the Israeli governing coalition the plan seems reasonably clear. Strike one was a direct hit against Mr. Arafat's manliness. The overt intention was to humiliate him to make him look impotent. Israel Defence Force Apache helicopters took out his personal helicopter fleet on the ground in Gaza while the chairman was in Ramallah. They bounced missiles off the doors of "Force 17" his part-ceremonial and part-terrorist "presidential guard". Mr. Arafat is being made to look naked and being reminded that the Israelis can kill him any time they please. An Israeli government spokesman completed the effect by saying contemptuously that without his helicopters to fly around it Mr. Arafat would now be free to think about some serious matters. One of the mistakes we make in the West in dealing with the Arab culture is to assume it is always wrong to make our adversaries lose face. This would in fact be very good advice when dealing with the Chinese but it does not necessarily pertain elsewhere. The Arabs themselves invariably begin internecine battles by attacking an enemy's "face" knowing it is a means to discouragement. In dealing with such characters as Yasser Arafat Bashad Assad (of Syria) and Saddam Hussein we would be well-advised to engage in a major effort to humiliate them before beginning our attacks. Conversely any show of respect is interpreted by them as a sign of weakness. Having smashed the helicopters the IDF then made several F-16 air strikes on Palestinian Authority security posts in Jenin. (The F-16s had not been used in domestic encounters for quite a while.) This town at the northern end of the Palestinian Authority's West Bank holdings has been the principal source for suicide bombers. Shin Beit the Israeli security service is in no doubt that it is a co-ordinating centre between the PA's civil administration and its terrorist wings. Next we should expect something bigger to happen. The IDF both planes and commandos are going to give the whole of the West Bank and Gaza a thorough working over. Rather than waiting pointlessly again for Mr. Arafat to "ban" the terrorist organizations -- which operate openly in Palestinian public space -- the Israelis are going to take them out for him. They will try to get all of them regardless of outcry and I do not think they will hesitate to pursue supporting operations in southern Lebanon or the Bekaa Valley. The reader following a scorecard at home should look out for these names in lists of casualties. 1. Muhamed Dahlan the PA's Gaza security chief. 2. Col. Tawfiq Tirawi in charge of intelligence in the West Bank. And 3. Marwan Barghouti the leader of the PA's Tanzim militia. All three have previously enjoyed immunity from Israeli attacks yet all three are believed by the Israeli authorities to be up to their hairlines in the orchestration of terrorist attacks on civilians. What Israel has decided apparently with the blessing of the U.S. administration is to open a second front in the international war against terrorism. The intention will be to leave Mr. Arafat in power but with no one left to answer his call when he next tries to "turn up the heat". The most shocking and encouraging part of this news came from Washington yesterday. Rather than issue its standard demand for Israel to show restraint the White House said this through Ari Fleischer its official spokesman: "Obviously Israel has the right to defend itself and the president understands that clearly." Now why should this news and the IDF's first symbolic strikes be a cause for Mr. Arafat and Palestinians generally to begin rejoicing? In Mr. Arafat's case because the Israeli cabinet has decided to let him and the civil part of his administration live. In the Palestinian case because the only conceivable way in which peace can come to Gaza and the West Bank is after Palestine's terrorists have been exterminated. Whether they appreciate their good luck is a moot point. The danger in the present Israeli course will be self-evident. The IDF is now entering into an engagement on the scale of a war with reserves being called up across Israel. And the chance of this war spreading is high. But a point is reached when the danger of going to war becomes less than the danger of not doing so. This is what happened in the United States on the 11th of September and I believe it is what happened in Israel not on Saturday (when the suicide bombers went to work murdering and maiming a couple of hundred innocent people) but the day before. For even before the attacks on Jerusalem and Haifa Israeli intelligence was forming a picture of very large terror preparations. To my information a huge hit on Tel Aviv may or may not have been stopped in the works; information about this is of course not publicly available. An attempt to co-ordinate a large number of suicide bombings on Israeli settlements in Gaza and West Bank seems to have been interrupted recently too. But whatever the state of play a high level Israeli defence and intelligence delegation briefed the U.S. envoy Gen. Zinni on Friday their presentation being carried in "real time" to the White House and state department in Washington. The fact is that the scale of the attacks on Jerusalem and Haifa came as no surprise. Nor indeed did the fact that the suicide bombs were of a new design and contained a more powerful high-tech explosive. The Israelis already knew that "showtime" was approaching. (The reserve call-ups preceded the weekend attacks.) What follows is the purest speculation for it is based on sources the plausibility of whom I am unable to judge; and on my own readings of a cast of characters. It is just possible that both Israeli and U.S. intelligence may be aware of an Iraqi plan to attack Israel before the U.S. has had a chance to attack Saddam Hussein's regime; that there is a direct Iraqi involvement in the present round of Palestinian terror strikes and that the weapons now being employed by the terrorists are of Iraqi provenance. (The Jordanian police intercepted such a shipment passing through overland last week.) The most probable intention would be to mount terror strikes in Israel on a scale that would not only defeat the latest U.S. effort to broker a peace agreement but beyond this provoke Israel into a complete re-occupation of the Gaza and West Bank. Iraq and possibly Syria would then respond by directly attacking Israel "in defence of the Palestinians" -- and in the (probably vain) hope of inspiring other Arab governments to join them. In Saddam's mind this would be a way of breaking out from the isolation in which he is likely to find himself when the U.S. does finally attack him. It would be his own last try at accomplishing possibly in rivalry with Osama bin Laden a "mother of battles ... between civilizations"; and of striking when the U.S. was not yet ready (correcting a mistake he made in 1991). While unlikely to work it would be a last bid to separate Israel from its U.S. "sponsor" at least for the outset. In that sense it would be a typical Saddam miscalculation. As I said this is only a speculation a hunch an attempt in my own mind to explain a lot of little facts that do not otherwise fit together. But whether it proves right or wrong we are about to see a transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship on the ground. And the good news is it would be hard to make it worse. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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