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April 14, 2002
MILITARY ANALYSIS
Superior Israeli Firepower Isn't Likely to End Terror
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
ASHINGTON, April 13 — The Israeli military operation in the
West Bank is a sweeping counterinsurgency campaign that given enough time could
reduce but not end bombing attacks by Palestinian militants, Israeli officials
and American experts agree.
Since the operation began two weeks ago, Israeli troops have combed Palestinian towns and refugee camps that the Israelis say have been sanctuaries for the militants.
Israeli troops have arrested and killed suspected militants, including one who they say planned the suicide bombing attack in Netanya during the Passover meal on March 27, killing 26 and prompting the Israeli military offensive. They have seized hundreds of weapons and uncovered dozens of bomb-making factories and retrieved explosive belts meant to be worn by suicide bombers.
The strategy is meant to deal a punishing blow to militant organizations like Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and Hamas and rip up their infrastructure, the term the Israelis use to describe everything from the hideaways where bombs are assembled and guns are stashed to the offices where the Palestinians keep their paperwork and payrolls.
Then Israeli troops plan to withdraw and perhaps establish a several-mile-wide defensive buffer zone in an effort to fend off future attacks, Israeli military and civilian officials said this week.
Israeli and American officials say the military operation may achieve many of its aims, especially if the Israeli military is given the weeks it says it needs to finish. Still, even Israeli officials acknowledge that military action alone cannot halt terrorist bombings if the Palestinians are determined to resist. To stop the bombing attacks completely, some sort of political accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians is needed, they say.
"The best protection is going to be a decision by the Palestinians not to do it," a senior Israeli military official said in an interview. "A buffer zone can contribute, will contribute, but it is not foolproof."
Israeli officials and American experts also say that an all-out conflict between Arabs and Israelis is very unlikely. Even though outnumbered, the Israeli military is qualitatively far superior to Arab armies and the Israelis have the ultimate deterrent: a small, undeclared nuclear arsenal.
But there is a serious risk that fighting could increase along Israel's northern frontier, as Hezbollah guerrillas step up their mortar attacks from Lebanon, including their first attack with a new mortar that is designed to destroy fortifications.
Seeking to forestall a broadening of the conflict, the Bush administration has repeatedly pressed Syria and Iran, which sponsor Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants, to avoid terrorist attacks that could further inflame the situation along the northern border and prompt a sizable Israeli retaliatory strike.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell underscored his concerns in a visit on Friday to Israel's Northern Command near Lebanon. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld delivered a stark warning last week.
"Iran is closely cooperating with Syria, and they're sending their folks right into Damascus and down into the Bekaa and then down into southern Lebanon and committing terrorist acts," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Israeli officials also said they hoped to avoid a stepped-up battle with Hezbollah at a time when the Israeli military was preoccupied with its raids on the West Bank.
"We do want to focus now on the Palestinian issue and leave this story for another time," an Israeli military official said, referring to the Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon. "The situation right now is extremely explosive. Because with this ongoing escalation, we might find ourselves at the end of the day at a point where we have to retaliate."
Operation "Defensive Shield," as the Israelis call their campaign in the West Bank, represents a new type of Arab-Israeli conflict. It is an example of what military analysts call asymmetric warfare, a conflict that pits a force well trained and equipped against bands of militants who are able to make their own explosives for a relative pittance and turn their bodies into warheads.
For Israeli forces, it is also an especially dangerous mission. This is not an American-style military campaign that uses airstrikes for weeks or even months before ground troops are deployed.
It is urban warfare, with soldiers moving alley to alley, house to house, searching for militants amid booby-trapped homes. Twenty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed and 124 wounded since the operation began on March 28.
The raids have also led to charges by Palestinians that hundreds of civilians have been killed in the Israeli assault on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, which the Israeli Army says is one of the main sanctuaries for the militants. The Israelis have adamantly rejected allegations that their troops have attacked civilians.
"They have invaded the redoubt areas in the West Bank to destroy the cadre and infrastructure of these insurgent organizations," said Walter P. Lang, the former head of the Middle East division of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "If we let the Israelis alone, they can set these organizations back quite a bit. Eventually, however, the terrorist organizations will begin to reconstitute. If I was an Israeli general, I would not be happy about the overall situation, but I would not know what else to do."
According to the Israeli military, Palestinian militants have based their operations in eight locations: Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Qalqilya and Gaza. The terrorist cells are able to organize suicide bombing attacks at little monetary cost.
In an appeal for funds from Fuad Shubaki, Yasir Arafat's financial aide, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades said it needed as little as 700 Israeli shekels (about $160) to make explosives for a suicide bombing attack, according to documents Israel says were seized during raids in the West Bank. The explosives are outfitted in specially made belts that Israeli forces have found throughout the West Bank.
Israeli officials say the suicide bombers sneak into Israel, often with the aid of experienced car thieves who know the roads and terrain. Israeli military officials estimate that only one in five of the suicide attacks is successful. Not only are some plots uncovered, but sometimes the homemade explosives fail to go off.
"Only 20 percent succeed, but that is enough," the senior Israeli military official said.
By invading Palestinian towns and settlements, the Israelis hope to capture or kill the militants and uproot the infrastructure. It is a challenging task and one that the Israelis are trying to do in a hurry.
First, the Israeli military does not know how much time it will have before pressure from Washington forces it to curtail the operation.
"We are working as if each day is our last day so that if they say we have to leave, we will have had enough time to target all the central sites," Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the chief of operations in the Israeli military, said recently.
Second, much of the Palestinian population appears to support the militants. Further, urban warfare is inherently risky.
In Nablus, militants buried hundreds of pounds of explosives and then repaved the road, hoping to blow up Israeli troops.
In Jenin, the fighting was the most bitter of the campaign. The Israelis apprehended Ali Zafouri, a senior operative for the Islamic Jihad group and a bomb maker. During the combat in the refugee camp there, however, 14 Israeli reservists were killed when a suicide bomber set off his explosive belt near them and other bombs were detonated. Another suicide attack was thwarted when Israeli soldiers fired on a Palestinian who refused to heed their orders to stop approaching a roadblock: he exploded.
The Israeli attacks have had a devastating effect on the security apparatus of Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority, which Israel asserts has financed and encouraged terrorism.
Wiping out other determined groups like Hamas and preventing the emergence of new militant organizations, however, is very difficult. In Tulkarm, militants began to return to the town almost as soon as the Israelis left. Days after withdrawing, Israeli troops returned to arrest a woman who they say planned to disguise herself as pregnant to carry out a suicide bombing attack.
Israeli officials said the basic plan was to withdraw the troops after they had ripped up the militants' infrastructure and then set up a new defensive zone that would include occupied as well as Israeli territory.
"We may have a buffer zone on the western edge of the West Bank," Ephraim Sneh, Israel's transportation minister and a retired brigadier general, said during a visit to Washington this week. "It would be on both sides of the line."
In the final analysis, Israeli officials say stopping terrorist attacks would require some kind of political accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. It is far from clear, however, that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or the Palestinians are prepared to take the steps to forge a political agreement.
"The immediate effect will be to reduce the attacks," Mr. Sneh said of the West Bank campaign. "But I do not think that any military move can bring about a full cessation of terrorism. That can only be brought about if the Palestinian side sincerely wants it. So we hope that Secretary Powell can jump-start the process of negotiation."
And even as Israel officials talked about winding down the current operation and resuming the search for a peace agreement, some military officials are beginning to warn the Palestinians that there could eventually be a new Israeli campaign if they continue to resist international pressure to agree to a truce.
The key to achieving a political settlement, a senior Israeli military official insisted, is to persuade the Palestinians that "their legitimacy might be hampered if they continue with this policy — that this time the world stopped Israel short of just destroying them but next time they are playing with fire."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/international/middleeast/14STRA.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
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