Note: The translations of articles from the Hebrew press are prepared by the Government Press Office as a service to foreign journalists in Israel. They express the views of the authors.
BIG THREATS, LITTLE SUCCESSES
(Background by Ron Ben-Yishai, "Yediot Ahronot", Oct 1, 1998, pp. 2,18)
In the past three months, there has been a strange, noticeable phenomenon
regarding Palestinian terrorism: Hamas leaders threaten murderous revenge
attacks; the GSS and IDF receive reliable information that members of
Hamas' military wing are preparing suicide attacks and bombings on a scale
previously unknown; but on the ground, with increasing frequency,
relatively small-scale incidents occur -- primarily hit-and-run attacks
using small arms and small explosive devices, against Jewish settlers.
The contradiction between the threats and the information about what Hamas
is trying to carry out, and what happens on the ground, may explain two
parallel and contradictory processes currently underway:
On the one hand, motivation is rising among activists of Hamas' military
wing to carry out attacks, whether because the political process has begun
to gather momentum or out of revenge for the death of Mohi A-Din A-Sharif
and the Awadallah brothers.
On the other hand, efforts by Israeli security forces and Palestinian
Authority preventive security apparatuses to foil attacks are becoming
more efficient. As a result, Israeli and Palestinian security forces have
succeeded, for now, in preventing large-scale bomb and suicide attacks,
though they cannot prevent local initiatives by individual terrorist
squads.
The reason: a large-scale bombing or suicide attack requires fairly
lengthy preparations and a relatively large number of participants. If
even a few key individuals are arrested or harmed, that is enough to
prevent such an attack. The killing of the Awadallah brothers, for
example, undoubtedly led to the foiling of several especially murderous
attacks and attempts to kidnap soldiers, which were planned for the
holidays. In this connection, PA officials also point to the recent
uncovering of a bomb factory in the Hebron area.
This is not the case with a shooting from a moving car, or a single
terrorist who tosses a grenade and flees back into the narrow alleyways of
the casbah in Hebron. Activists on the ground, who are determined to exact
revenge on Israel and derail the political process, do what they can with
the explosives and weapons they have -- and that is what we are getting
now.
On the basis of previous experience, it is certainly reasonable to assume
that these small, local attacks are not the last of it. Hamas' Gaza-based
terrorist apparatuses have also not yet entered the picture, since Sheikh
Yassin apparently does not now have an interest in entering into a head-on
confrontation with Arafat. He also does not want to interfere with the PA
gaining territory as part of the second redeployment. However, we have not
heard the last of Hamas.