Targeted assassination / Little room for mistakes

The fragile, indirect agreement the Egyptians brokered between Israel and Hamas over Gaza will meet its first test Thursday.

The killings Wednesday of five wanted militants by the Israel Police's anti-terrorism unit, in two incidents on the West Bank, is likely to spur Islamic Jihad into attempting retaliatory rocket attacks from Gaza into the Negev. It seems we've been here many times before.

While official Israel denies the existence of an understanding with Hamas, in practice the past week was the quietest in months on the Gaza border. Wednesday's incidents emphasize the understandings' main weakness, which can end the calm at any moment.

Hamas is demanding that the cease-fire include an Israeli commitment, in the long term, to stop arresting terror suspects in the West Bank. Hamas' leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, raised the demand Wednesday just a few hours before the incident in Bethlehem.

Israel rejects the demand out of fear it would give the terror organizations a free pass to plan attacks. The fight against terror in the West Bank is constant. When it leads to Palestinian casualties it can have immediate effects on events in Gaza.

Until Wednesday Hamas seemed to be imposing its will for a lull on the other factions in the Strip. But Islamic Jihad, to which four of the five militants killed Wednesday belonged, has very different interests. Iran, which controls Islamic Jihad with an iron hand and has significant influence over Hamas, apparently wants a renewed escalation of the conflict.

Wednesday night, IDF officials expected Islamic Jihad to respond Thursday to Wednesday's events by firing rockets at Sderot, and its militants have threatened to do so. The old maxim that an oral agreement is not worth the paper it's not written on, may be borne out once again Thursday.

The urgency of Wednesday's Bethlehem incident must be questioned. (The Islamic Jihad man killed in the second incident was planning imminent terror attacks.) The four militants killed in Bethlehem were on the IDF's wanted list for around eight years, and the operation where they were eliminated was a settling of scores by the police anti-terror squad and the Shin Bet security service.

Was it also urgent? Apparently not. The four were not associated with any specific terror alerts. The decision to launch the operation was probably more a matter of opportunity than immediate need.

Mohammed Shahada, the most senior of the militants killed Wednesday, sensed that his days were numbered. Wednesday, about two hours before his death, Shahada and three associates visited the Bethlehem offices of the Palestinian news agency, Maan. The four spoke with Chief Editor Nasser Laham. Shahada complained about the IDF's demolition of his home during a failed attempt to arrest him last week.

"The Israelis aren't planning to arrest me, they're planning to kill me," Shahada said He refused even to drink coffee with Laham, fearing that the IDF was following him. The four drove to a restaurant owned by a relative of Shahada's. The police's undercover team was waiting nearby.

A few hours before the operation, a senior PA official asked why Israel was not cooperating with the Palestinians over Shahada's capture. "If you guys had told us he was planning an attack we would have arrested him," the officials said.

Even after Hamas' takeover of Gaza and the open war waged by the PA against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, Israel demonstrates absolutely no trust in or tolerance for the Palestinian preventive security apparatus. Sometimes the attitude is justified. Most of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad detainees are released from PA custody after a few days. But Israel also seems to prefer to play down the PA's gains in its war against Islamic groups. On Tuesday PA security forces discovered an Islamic Jihad explosives laboratory, and on Sunday they found an explosive device in the village of Yamun.

The PA is hurt by Israel's dismissive attitude. After the intelligence estimate by GOC Central Command Gadi Shamni, where he said that without an IDF presence in the West Bank Hamas would take it over within two days, a PA military leader told his Israeli counterparts: "Maybe if would be more convenient for you if we moved aside and left you alone with Hamas as a future partner in the West Bank."

Wednesday's police operation dealt a blow to the PA's efforts to bolster its military status. But Israel apparently does not have the time or space to accept Palestinian mistakes in the West Bank. Every missed opportunity, intentional or not, in the PA's war against West Bank terror could end in another terror attack in Jerusalem.