The escalating Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the form of assassinations, land and property seizures, demolition of scores of houses and a tight economic siege has simply provoked more anti-Israeli attacks and an intensified Palestinian nationalist struggle.
To Israelis, meanwhile, this escalation means they expect to be blown to pieces while boarding the bus or shopping in Tel Aviv, Netanya or any other location in the Jewish state.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the series of bombings averted in the last two days by rapid civilian and security forces action has frayed Israeli nerves and raised questions about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's refusal to negotiate "under fire" with the Palestinian Authority.
The latest attempted bombing came Friday as Israelis rushed to prepare for the Jewish Sabbath. A young woman, described by police as a 23-year-old mother of two from the West Bank city of Nablus, refused to allow a security guard at Tel Aviv's crowded central bus station to search her bag. After a struggle, she was arrested, and 13 pounds of explosives, nails and metal shards were found in the bag, police said. A man who was with her reportedly escaped.
The attack was thwarted just hours after soldiers detonated another bomb that was hidden in a burning tire near Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank. A day earlier, a 52-year-old bus driver became a hero when he shoved off his bus a Palestinian youth who had boarded it carrying a black bag bristling with wires and switches. The bag contained a large bomb, an army spokesman said.
No one was hurt in any of the incidents. Nor were there any injuries a few days ago when a large bomb was discovered inside a hollowed-out watermelon on a bus, or when a small bomb exploded in a beer can sitting on a grocery store shelf in Jerusalem.
Last week, a day after Israeli helicopters fired missiles at Hamas leaders in a civilian block of flats in Nablus, killing five resistance leaders, a journalist and two passing children, a sappers’ drill in Tel Aviv spread panic downtown.
An Israeli commented that the bomb squad had chosen a bad time to train on contained explosions, given that nerves were being jangled by the expectation of revenge attacks.
Meanwhile, said the paper, the sense of siege and impending catastrophe created by the almost daily close calls was sparking criticism of Sharon's policies.
His principle of not negotiating while attacks continue is still widely popular with the public. But critics from the left, right and center charge that he has failed to either restore security or achieve peace, as he promised to do in his election campaign.
"Sharon is getting it from both sides," Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University told the LA Times.
Every time the prime minister sends his son and confidant, Omri, or Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to meet with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the right accuses Sharon of breaking his promise not to negotiate, Avineri said. Every time the prime minister sends Israeli special forces to kill Palestinians, the left accuses him of hurtling toward war.
"He doesn't have a strategy," Avineri said. "He is improvising and taking it one day at a time."
Within his own cabinet, right-wing ministers are urging Sharon to declare the Palestinian Authority a terrorist entity and mount a massive assault against it, even as the dovish Peres argues that Israel should launch a new peace initiative and give back more of the territory occupied by Israel for 34 years.
News of a ready Israeli plan has been leaked by authoritative sources such as arms industry experts Jane’s Report.
Jane's said that 40,000 Palestinian troops were, according to the plan, to be killed or deported and Arafat’s political career terminated.
The report's existence was categorically denied by Peres and other Israeli officials, but few Arabs tend to believe them.
Sharon has publicly rejected Peres' call to negotiate, saying that to do so while attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers continued would be to "reward terrorism."
In a speech Thursday at a military graduation ceremony outside Tel Aviv, Sharon told Israelis that eight years after embarking on a process that was expected to have culminated in a two-state solution, they should lower their expectations.
"A clear-eyed view of the continued state of animosity demands a different approach than the one we have tried so far with the Palestinians," he said, adding that his goal is "gradual progress based on interim agreements, with the long-term goal of reaching a state of nonbelligerence."
But the Palestinians say they will not abandon their struggle for liberation from Israeli occupation for long-term interim arrangements that will, in effect, perpetuate Israel's hold on those parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that it still controls, said the daily.
The report added that Israel's campaign to eliminate Palestinians whom it suspects of planning or carrying out attacks has united Palestinian political factions and the Palestinian public in calls for revenge rather than a return to negotiations.
An opinion piece released late Thursday by WAFA, the Palestinian news agency, offered a rare hint that the Palestinian leadership might be searching for a way to cool this anger and rein in militants. Signed by someone identified only as "Political Editor," the piece called for the shooting to stop and for the uprising that erupted last September to continue by political means.
"We have to admit that no matter how many casualties we cause the Israelis, we will not be able to win the war against them. . . ," the piece said. "Only by political means shall we be able to achieve our goals, by the use of rocks to fight the Israelis, on the roadblocks and in the settlements, not inside Israel and not using firearms."
The anonymous editor called for using “shoes” in fighting the Israelis, referring to clashes last week in which Palestinians crowding in the Al Aqsa Mosque threw stones and shoes at Israeli troops, stopping them from entering the holy site.
Officials in the prime minister's office cited by the paper interpreted the commentary not as an olive branch but as evidence that the Palestinian Authority fears that if one of the would-be bombers succeeds, that could trigger the abovementioned sort of massive Israeli retaliation that could topple the authority and force Arafat into exile.
But some Israeli commentators joined Peres this week in arguing that Israel's only hope of avoiding further escalation was to reach out to the Palestinians.
"We must negotiate under fire. Years of bloody warfare throughout the world could not have ended any other way," said Yoel Marcus, an influential centrist political commentator for the newspaper Haaretz. Sharon's popularity "gives him strength that crosses political lines," Marcus said. The retired general "has the power of the people behind him--to attack, but also to extend a hand."
In the same paper, left-wing columnist Doron Rosenblum was quoted as saying that the "constant reiterating of that mantra" of no negotiations under fire "worked pretty well for almost a year, but something of its spell is now beginning to fade." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
