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Date Posted: 23:29:26 06/25/02 Tue
Author: Lynn Msc
Subject: Occupations without end. Amen.

Wednesday, June 26, 2002 Tamuz 16, 5762 Israel Time:  (GMT+3)
Background / Occupation without end, amen
By Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz Correspondent

Throwing down the gauntlet of conquering Palestinian Authority lands again in response to suicide bombings, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sparked charges that his proposal means no less than a return to permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

In a dramatic, dead-of-night announcement following one of the bloodiest suicide bus attacks on record, the heads of the parties that make up Sharon's ruling coalition declared early Wednesday that Israel would henceforth reply to every Palestinian terror attack by seizing PA territory, "which will be held for as long as the terror continues." Additional terrorist attacks, the statement warned, "will bring about the capture of additional territories."

For the past 18 months, Israel has consistently maintained that it had "no interest in remaining in Area A" - the regions specified by past peace accords as under formal PA rule - and that its troops would withdraw from these areas as soon as their specific, limited missions there had been completed.

Sources said right-wing cabinet ministers - many of whom still nurse hopes of a return to the concept of Greater Israel, Israeli dominion over all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip - left the meeting with little-disguised satisfaction.

Critics of the decision lost no time in stating that it meant a return to the days of full Israeli occupation.

"Re-conquering the West Bank and the Strip is the only possible meaning of this decision... Not only will this decision fail to prevent terrorism, it will in fact step up terrorism," Labor MK Haim Ramon said. "The Israeli government's new policy will lead in the end to re-capturing all the territory and will also result in ruling over three-and-a-half-million Palestinians... thus doing the bidding of the extreme right and the settlers, turning the clock back by 30 years."

Adding fuel to Ramon's charges, Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi of Sharon's ruling Likud explicitly urged a return to the period that preceded Israel's landmark 1993 peace deal with Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.

"The government should return absolute control over the whole of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] to the army; throw Yasser Arafat and all senior PA officials back to Tunis; and immediately deport the families of suicide bombers," Israel Radio quoted Hanegbi as saying.

The new policy could pose additional problems for Israel because its announcement was so soon after the suicide bombing that left 19 dead on a main Jerusalem thoroughfare.

Labor ministers said Tuesday that the government should delay its response, both to allow the world to see the horrific results of the bombing and to keep Israeli pain in the foreground.

But cabinet hawks were adamant Tuesday that Israel refuse to delay its response. In convening his hard-liner-dominated "extended kitchen cabinet" rather than his moderate-leaning "inner kitchen cabinet" (composed of Labor leaders such as Foreign Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres) Sharon, whose rage was evident when he visited the site of the bombing Tuesday, guaranteed a decision as rapid as it was tough.

If anything, hawkish positions only gained currency because of grass-roots Israeli anger over reports of foreign figures voicing apparent sympathy for suicide bombers.

Just as news of the bombing broke in Israel, the British Guardian newspaper quoted CNN founder Ted Turner as equating the acts of Palestinian militants with those of the Israel Defense Forces: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers - that's all they have," Turner said in comments which he later said he regretted.

"The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make the case that both sides are involved in terrorism."

At the same time, Ha'aretz military affairs commentator Ze'ev Schiff notes that immediate Israeli military retaliations have in the past acted to undercut the Jewish state's critical battle for international public opinion.

"For some time, there has been a need to 'unlink' the cycle of Palestinian terror immediately followed by a more or less forceful Israeli reaction," Schiff writes in Wednesday's paper. "This is accompanied by a diplomatic ritual that began after the Dolphinarium discotheque bombing last year, when various foreign ministers condemn Palestinian terror and then criticize Israel for its military reaction."

In Schiff's view, the immediacy of IDF responses also bears a cost in military efficacy. "Another flaw in this system is that the IDF loses the element of surprise. On the Palestinian side, they expect an Israeli reaction, especially as the anticipation is echoed, reverberated and amplified in the Israeli media, which promises a forceful reaction. It's only natural under such circumstances that the terrorists and their handlers take cover."

Wednesday, June 26, 2002 Tamuz 16, 5762 Israel Time:  (GMT+3)
Background / Occupation without end, amen
By Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz Correspondent

Throwing down the gauntlet of conquering Palestinian Authority lands again in response to suicide bombings, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sparked charges that his proposal means no less than a return to permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

In a dramatic, dead-of-night announcement following one of the bloodiest suicide bus attacks on record, the heads of the parties that make up Sharon's ruling coalition declared early Wednesday that Israel would henceforth reply to every Palestinian terror attack by seizing PA territory, "which will be held for as long as the terror continues." Additional terrorist attacks, the statement warned, "will bring about the capture of additional territories."

For the past 18 months, Israel has consistently maintained that it had "no interest in remaining in Area A" - the regions specified by past peace accords as under formal PA rule - and that its troops would withdraw from these areas as soon as their specific, limited missions there had been completed.

Sources said right-wing cabinet ministers - many of whom still nurse hopes of a return to the concept of Greater Israel, Israeli dominion over all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip - left the meeting with little-disguised satisfaction.

Critics of the decision lost no time in stating that it meant a return to the days of full Israeli occupation.

"Re-conquering the West Bank and the Strip is the only possible meaning of this decision... Not only will this decision fail to prevent terrorism, it will in fact step up terrorism," Labor MK Haim Ramon said. "The Israeli government's new policy will lead in the end to re-capturing all the territory and will also result in ruling over three-and-a-half-million Palestinians... thus doing the bidding of the extreme right and the settlers, turning the clock back by 30 years."

Adding fuel to Ramon's charges, Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi of Sharon's ruling Likud explicitly urged a return to the period that preceded Israel's landmark 1993 peace deal with Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.

"The government should return absolute control over the whole of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] to the army; throw Yasser Arafat and all senior PA officials back to Tunis; and immediately deport the families of suicide bombers," Israel Radio quoted Hanegbi as saying.

The new policy could pose additional problems for Israel because its announcement was so soon after the suicide bombing that left 19 dead on a main Jerusalem thoroughfare.

Labor ministers said Tuesday that the government should delay its response, both to allow the world to see the horrific results of the bombing and to keep Israeli pain in the foreground.

But cabinet hawks were adamant Tuesday that Israel refuse to delay its response. In convening his hard-liner-dominated "extended kitchen cabinet" rather than his moderate-leaning "inner kitchen cabinet" (composed of Labor leaders such as Foreign Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres) Sharon, whose rage was evident when he visited the site of the bombing Tuesday, guaranteed a decision as rapid as it was tough.

If anything, hawkish positions only gained currency because of grass-roots Israeli anger over reports of foreign figures voicing apparent sympathy for suicide bombers.

Just as news of the bombing broke in Israel, the British Guardian newspaper quoted CNN founder Ted Turner as equating the acts of Palestinian militants with those of the Israel Defense Forces: "The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers - that's all they have," Turner said in comments which he later said he regretted.

"The Israelis ... they've got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make the case that both sides are involved in terrorism."

At the same time, Ha'aretz military affairs commentator Ze'ev Schiff notes that immediate Israeli military retaliations have in the past acted to undercut the Jewish state's critical battle for international public opinion.

"For some time, there has been a need to 'unlink' the cycle of Palestinian terror immediately followed by a more or less forceful Israeli reaction," Schiff writes in Wednesday's paper. "This is accompanied by a diplomatic ritual that began after the Dolphinarium discotheque bombing last year, when various foreign ministers condemn Palestinian terror and then criticize Israel for its military reaction."

In Schiff's view, the immediacy of IDF responses also bears a cost in military efficacy. "Another flaw in this system is that the IDF loses the element of surprise. On the Palestinian side, they expect an Israeli reaction, especially as the anticipation is echoed, reverberated and amplified in the Israeli media, which promises a forceful reaction. It's only natural under such circumstances that the terrorists and their handlers take cover."

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