Here, in a nutshell, is the Israel Defense Forces' dilemma ahead of the Annapolis conference: To what extent should proactive measures in the West Bank (and to a lesser extent in the Gaza Strip) be rolled back in the coming days?
On the one hand, an excess of arrest operations could obviously lead to an unnecessary entanglement that would cloud the atmosphere at the conference, whose chances for success are already limited. If civilians are killed - or even wanted gunmen - on the day before the summit, the Palestinians will be able to accuse Israel of sabotaging the peace process. On the other hand, reducing the IDF's activity could let Palestinian terrorist groups achieve their goal of disrupting the conference by a showy attack.
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As of last night, the central and southern army commands had not received any new directives. In an arrest sweep yesterday in the heart of Tul Karm, a relatively senior wanted militant from Fatah was killed and his accomplice badly wounded; in the Gaza Strip, three gunmen were killed when they approached the Erez crossing. Before past conferences of this sort, orders were issued to maintain a lower profile; to make do for a few days with pursuing only "ticking bombs." Yesterday there was one specific alert about a plan to dispatch a suicide bomber (that was the reason for the temporary high alert in Jerusalem).
Several lesser alerts exist, but the main fear is of "sleeper" cells hitting Israel without any warning. The IDF is refraining for now from deploying more forces in the West Bank, and merely employing a relatively large number of spot checkpoints along roads.
Syria's announcement yesterday that it will send its deputy foreign minister to the conference ostensibly lowers the risk of an imminent terror attack. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are still headquartered in Damascus, and it's doubtful Syria wants to be accused of undermining the conference. But Israeli intelligence officials say it's not that simple. General orders to carry out an attack have already gone out, and the networks in the West Bank now operate independently. From the moment policy is set at the headquarters in Syria and the Gaza Strip, the cells are free to act at their own discretion. And after many weeks of pressure to deliver something to torpedo the conference, they might act.
Senior intelligence sources told Haaretz yesterday that despite signs of greater security cooperation among Palestinian Authority agencies, the Palestinians are very far from the ability to thwart attacks they displayed in the years between the wave of bus bombings in the winter of 1996 and the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000. The intelligence people are more impressed by the leadership of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad than that of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. But unlike Abbas, Fayyad doesn't have any troops (or a hard-core of political loyalists) to enforce his say.
In light of this, the Shin Bet and IDF share the same negative opinion concerning far-reaching gestures toward the Palestinians: The PA will not be able to impose order on West Bank towns if the IDF stops operating there each night.
Even worse, it would take just a few months for an effective infrastructure to develop in those towns for producing Qassam rockets that would threaten Israel's Sharon and Dan regions.
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