Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Pushed to the edge by rage and revenge, Palestinians and Israelis stare into the abyss of war.
Jun 6, 2001 | It was the most deadly suicide bombing in five years -- right in the heart of civilian Israel. After a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up and killed 20 young revelers waiting at the doorstep of a Tel Aviv nightclub last Friday, Palestinian operatives and security officials went into hiding, bracing for a massive Israeli reprisal air raid. At the same time, terrified Israelis deserted public spaces and waited nervously for the next bomb in an extensive terror campaign promised by Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Days later, the two sides are still holding their breath, expecting a tentative truce between them to founder at any moment. Although the number of violent incidents has gone down since Friday's carnage, neither the cease-fire announced by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Saturday under intense international pressure nor Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of "restraint" seems capable of stopping the bloodshed for very long.
There is a faint glimmer of hope: a U.S.-led plan to stop the violence, cool off tempers and implement confidence-building measures, such as stopping construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. A commission headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell drafted the plan. But Israelis and Palestinians disagree over key points in the Mitchell initiative. And the mood in the street and in security headquarters at the moment points less toward reconciliation than escalation.
According to Israeli commentators, any plans will turn to smoke if seemingly imminent strikes by Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad take place. "One more large-scale attack by them and this entire temporary cease-fire, the entire diplomatic effort, all of the work being done by the emissaries and the 'baby-sitters' will go down the drain," commented Alex Fishman in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
Public sentiment isn't hopeful. A survey by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion revealed that three-quarters of Palestinian respondents support "military operations similar to that of Netanya of May 18, 2001," when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis at a shopping mall entrance. In other words, a majority supports terrorism. For their part, 64 percent of Israelis polled declared they were in a "bad mood" in a survey published by Yedioth Ahronoth last Friday before the disco bombing; only 5 percent said they thought that the violence would end within a month, while 51 percent thought it would drag on for "a number of years."
Recent polls have also showed that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians do not believe in cease-fires and would rather see their leaderships lead them into battle to deal the enemy a strong and hypothetically final blow.
There is bad blood in the Holy Land, and plenty of people willing to wash it with their own. About 600 people have died since relative peace between Palestinians and Israelis disintegrated last September. Rocks, bullets, missiles and bombs have injured hundreds of Israelis and tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The conflict, which started with Palestinian rioting and a brutal Israeli crackdown after Sharon made a controversial visit to a Jerusalem shrine, looks less and less like a traditional "intifada," the Arabic word for "popular uprising," and more like guerrilla warfare, or a hybrid type of war for which experts have yet to come up with a name.
Naming the situation, in fact, is an integral part of the conflict, as Palestinians and Israelis argue over the purpose of the current violence and who is to blame for the rising toll.
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