The Israeli reasoning

[Mil]

Israel tries to ensure PA will take fall if peace efforts fail

By Aluf Benn



Amid growing fears that the Aqaba process and the
hudna will collapse as did previous efforts to end
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel is making
another bid to save the process, or at least to
ensure the blame is placed on the Palestinians, in
case of failure.




"We must assume that everything
is going to fall apart, and if
so, it had better fall apart on
the neighbor's side rather than
on ours," a Jerusalem source
said.

In the last few days the
American administration sent
messages to Israel, urging it

to continue the Aqaba process. Senior American
officials said they agreed with the Israeli
position, which conditions further political
progress on the Palestinian Authority's taking
action against terror infrastructures in places
where assumes security control. But they pushed
Israel to continue making confidence-building
gestures and to hand over more cities to the
Palestinians.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz yesterday met his
Palestinian counterpart Mohammed Dahlan to
discuss transferring additional cities in the
West Bank to the Palestinians' control. Mofaz
suggested handing over Jericho and Qalqiliyah
and setting an accelerated timetable to hand
over another city.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Mofaz decided
that Israel will stick to the Aqaba process.
They decided that the Israel Defense Forces
would continue targeted operations against
terror organizations in the West Bank and at
the same time continue easing the restrictions
on the Palestinian population. But any
significant political move will be conditioned
on the Palestinians' taking steps to act
against terror. This means that Israel will do
the minimum the United States is demanding to
keep the process alive.

The defense establishment and political
leadership did not agree on how to respond to
Tuesday's attacks on Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel.
Officals agreed that Palestinian Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas and Dahlan are reluctant to act
against the terror organizations. The question
was whether Israel could change their minds and
what it should do.

The IDF and Shin Bet seemed to have swapped
their customary positions. The army, which in
the past displayed total lack of trust in the
Palestinians, now supports handing over more
towns to them. The IDF top brass believe Dahlan
has sufficient forces and capability to deal
with the terror infrastructures and if given
responsibility and subjected to American
pressure, he will start moving.

"Our control of Nablus did not prevent the
terrorst attacks this week," a cabinet source
said. "If we had been out of the city, it would
have been the Palestinians' responsibility."

Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter thinks the PA will do
nothing against terrorism, therefore there is
no point in giving it any more responsibility.
The Shin Bet, which in the past supported full
cooperation with the Palestinians, now assumes
the Aqaba process will collapse and doubts
Abbas and Dahlan's ability to fight against
terrorism, even if they wanted to.

Sharon and Mofaz did not accept the Shin Bet's
position, because that would have meant
stopping the process at Israel's initiative, a
security source said. Sharon charged Mofaz with
deciding what cities to hand over to the
Palestinians and when.

Jerusalem received indications that the White
House too is becoming increasingly disappointed
with Abbas. The Americans had pinned many hopes
on him, believing that his weight and authority
would grow with the job, but they learned that
his cabinet is not making the necessary changes
and is not fighting against terrorism.

The State Department is still displaying a more
balanced approach, making demands of Israel as
well as of the Palestinians. But even Colin
Powell and his people have stepped up their
demands of the Palestinian government to start
acting against terrorism.

The Israelis were encouraged by the hard talk
between John Wolf, the American envoy in charge
of implementing the road map, and Dahlan last
Monday. Wolf warned that if no change occurs
and the PA does not start acting against
terrorism, there will be no Palestinian state
and the U.S. will withdraw its support for it.
Dahlan, Israeli sources reported, was unfazed.
He explained to Wolf that his forces were
meager and told him of his efforts to prevent
terror attacks.

Sharon, who met American envoys twice last week
- on Monday he met Wolf and on Tuesday
Assistant Secretary of State William Burns -
slammed the PA and demanded that the Americans
increase their pressure on Abbas and Dahlan.
Mofaz said similar things at his meeting with
Wolf yesterday.

Sharon met Burns a few hours after the attacks
in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel and warned that if
the PA fails to act against the terror
infrastructure, Israel will do so instead.
Sharon hardly let Burns speak at all, and if
the Americans had any demands to make of
Israel, Burns did not get a chance to utter
them.

The effectiveness of the American pressure may
be questioned, as so far it has achieved
nothing but evasive responses from the
Palestinians. Israeli sources assume that if
the Americans despair of Abbas, they will
threaten to cut the PA's funds off, thus
leading to the collapse of its government and
the rise of an alternative leadership.

[Mil]

MI Chief: Cease-fire in steep decline, faces critical point

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service



The cease-fire on attacks against Israelis by
Palestinian terror groups "is at a critical
point," Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash,



Head of the IDF Military
Intelligence Corps, said Friday
evening.

"I estimate that we are not at
the end of the hudna, but I
think that the hudna is at a
critical point, which can be
defined as a decline," he said
in an interview on Channel One
TV. "I think the decline is

very steep, and we don't necessarily have to
reach its abyss."

"But I think something happened over the last
two weeks which we expected because in the end
the cease-fire depends on the Hamas, Islamic
Jihad and extremist groups," he added.

Shin Bet security service sources said Thursday
night that senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad
operatives have recently resumed planning
terror attacks for immediate execution, in
defiance of the cease-fire.

Security services are on alert Friday, having
received 25 specific warnings of terror
attacks, Israel Radio reported.

Egypt is planning to send a delegation to the
Gaza Strip and Ramallah to try to persuade the
militant Palestinian organizations to keep to
the cease-fire and even extend it, Israel Radio
quoted Arabic-language newspapers as reporting
Friday.

One operative who sources said was planning
attacks was Mohammed Sidr, the head of Islamic
Jihad's military wing in Hebron, whom Israel
killed Thursday morning during an attempt to
arrest him. Defense sources said that Sidr
planned to send a booby-trapped car into either
Jerusalem or Hebron in the near future, and had
already acquired the car.

Israel holds Sidr, 25, responsible for attacks
that killed 21 people, and he has long been one
of the top names on Israel's wanted list.

Senior aide to Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said
Thursday that the killing of Sidr was a new
violation of the cease-fire by Israel, an
escalation and a threat to the hudna, Israel
Radio reported.

Islamic Jihad announced Thursday that it will
avenge Sidr's killing, with senior organization
members hinting that they plan an attack inside
the Green Line in retaliation - though the
organization insisted that it otherwise remains
committed to the cease-fire.

But Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces sources
said Thursday night that Hamas and Islamic
Jihad cells in various parts of the West Bank
had been planning attacks for immediate
execution even before Sidr's death. They added
that the organizations' leaders in Damascus and
Gaza had tacitly approved this change:
Previously, both groups had confined themselves
to preparing for operations after the
cease-fire ended.

In addition, IDF sources said, Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is encouraging
Fatah cells in the northern West Bank to commit
attacks as well. They said that Arafat recently
sent money to the Fatah cell in the Balata
refugee camp that carried out Tuesday's suicide
bombing in Rosh Ha'ayin.

"Hamas is not interested in blowing up the
cease-fire just now," a senior IDF source said.
"But they want to create a mechanism that
enables them to hit us whenever it's convenient
for them - to protest the killing or arrest of
wanted men or the failure to release additional
prisoners. And Islamic Jihad, of course, is
starting to imitate them."

Nevertheless - and in contrast to the Shin Bet -
the IDF supports transferring additional West
Bank cities to the Palestinians, both to put
the PA to a real test as soon as possible and
to prevent the diplomatic process from
collapsing due to a lack of Israeli gestures.
This was one of the topics that Mofaz discussed
with Dahlan last night - along with Israel's
traditional demand that the PA start taking
action against Hamas and Jihad. Palestinian
sources described the meeting as positive, but
said that no agreements were reached, and the
two will continue the discussions in the coming
days.

The PA's Preventive Security Service did raid an
Islamic Jihad stronghold in the Shati refugee
camp in Gaza Thursday - but this was in
response to a bomb that went off Wednesday
night at the entrance to the service's
headquarters in the camp, which the PA believes
was set by Jihad members. The raid sparked a
firefight between the Palestinian forces in
which seven people were injured, including
passersby. The PA also arrested a senior Jihad
official. The organization responded by
accusing the PA of collaborating with Israel in
Sidr's death.