JERUSALEM (AP - 2:50am ET) - A powerful bomb exploded during morning rush hour Sunday in a crowded open-air market in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. Two people were killed and at least 25 wounded, including two seriously, paramedics said. The blast went off at about 8:55 a.m. in the center of Netanya. [Initial reports indicate 2 Israeli dead, 35 wounded, and the Palestinian who set off the bomb dead.]

"...The need to "make the Palestinian ask himself each morning: 'why the hell did we start this intifada? What have we gained from it?'"

The Arab regimes are far too weak and co-opted to do anything serious. The Arafat regime is far too corrupt and incompetent to do anything serious.

The Americans are far too under the thumb of the Israeli/Jewish lobby whose strength remains overwhelming in the U.S. -- the Arab American groups still far too confused, innocent, and self-centered to have any significant impact (a situation their own handlers, the Arab regimes, encourage to stay this way for their own reasons).

And so the Palestinian people not only suffer terribly; but the craven world watches, the long-discredited United Nations orates, the laughable Arab League gesticulates, and the ridiculously manipulated Muslim groups submit -- all claiming of course to be so concerned but in reality all collectively doing little useful and hardly anything serious.

And now the Israeli army (supplied and backed of course by the American army), gets ready to clamp down even further until the Palestinians are forced once again into submission. These two articles in today's Ha'aretz help set the new stage:

[Ha'aretz 4 March 2001]: Two more terms have been added recently to the acronym-studded, voluminous lexicon of Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Badatz and Tigbatz.

The first refers to blocking off roads to close escape routes for terrorists after gunfire attacks. The second alludes to beefing-up security deployments on roads in the territories. Anyone who has traveled recently from Hebron toward Jerusalem during the afternoon is likely to have observed the policy for which this second acronym stands: soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces can be seen at each junction, and there are several armed personnel carriers parked along roads.

Current Israeli defense tactics in the territories reenact a policy followed more than a decade ago, when Yitzhak Mordechai served as IDF Central Commander. As was the case then, makeshift IDF holding posts have sprouted up in numerous West Bank flash-points. Some ten new IDF posts have appeared in the Hebron region alone; most have been set-up on the rooftops of Palestinian houses that are located alongside Route 60, the road which leads to Jerusalem. The IDF has put up other posts in locales such as the "Tunnel Road," which runs between Al Hader and the Gilo neighborhood.

The new policy has been implemented in the Ramallah area as well, with an IDF post newly assembled at the "British Police junction," where a Jewish resident from the Ateret settlement was wounded about a week ago. The army has established another three posts, some featuring tanks, on route 433, which runs between Jerusalem and Modi'in.

The practical security utility of these new roadside posts is questionable. IDF soldiers stationed at them have themselves become the potential targets of terror attacks. Yet the IDF is responding to perceived siege conditions, in which the sense of safety felt by settlers and other Israelis is almost as important as actual security. Given the current situation, in which thousands of Israeli citizens feel threatened on the road, the IDF believes that its new policy is an appropriate and necessary measure.

While the IDF General Staff prepares for various scenarios which might be realized after the Sharon government takes office, it remains possible that one major shift in the conditions in the territories could generate a faster flow of events than top planners are anticipating.

As the Al Aqsa Intifada rages on, IDF commanders in the field are speaking in an increasingly militant vernacular. These lower level officers have started to adopt a tougher stance toward the Palestinian Authority. Possessing considerable power to shape the situation, these IDF officers could be creating facts which will be impossible to reverse should Israel and the PA resume talks.

When the violence erupted in October 2000, these brigade commanders came close to sounding like civil administration officials, voicing moderately-phrased interpretations of economic and political realities in the PA. Officers in the territories were often heard expressing such beliefs as: "A Palestinian who gets up to work in the morning won't go off and throw rocks."

Five violence-packed months later, the same officers have lost interest in social-welfare aspects of relations with the Palestinians. Our job, they say, boils down to one objective: to prevent attacks against Jews. Originally skeptical that the confrontation was even serious, these officers have returned to viewing the Palestinians as enemies.

"Our problem is that we started to think too much like politicians," one high-ranking IDF officer explains. "I don't need to be good to the Palestinians. That's an option which the political leadership has."

Changing their thinking, other officers now talk about the need to "make the Palestinian ask himself each morning: 'why the hell did we start this intifada? What have we gained from it?'"

Fortifying its presence alongside West Bank roads, and planning new strategies to clamp down on the current intifada, some IDF officers regard recent PA statements as confirmation that the army has been involved in a genuine confrontation with the Palestinians all along. They interpret a new disclosure by PA Telecommunications Minister Imad Faluji in this light - Faluji said that the PA planned the Al Aqsa Intifada in detail after the Camp David summit.

[Ha'aretz - 4 March 2001]: Designated defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer promised he would make every effort to ensure that the Palestinians quickly conclude that the only battlefield for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the negotiating table. Speaking after his nomination as the Labor Party's candidate for the defense post, Ben-Eliezer said he supported Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon's position that talks between Israel and the Palestinians could resume only after a cessation of the current violence.

"There must be rigid and clear rules," Ben-Eliezer said. "I am opposed to collective punishment because I think that the majority among the Palestinian nation wants to reach a settlement. There is a need to go after specific targets - those carrying out the terror strikes and those who send them. ... The [current] situation, in which they are killing us every day, cannot continue."

Meretz leader Yossi Sarid said that Ben-Eliezer was the natural choice for the position of defense minister in Sharon's government. "If a government is supposed to operate on the basis of complete agreement between the prime minister and his defense minister, then, from my knowledge of both of them, there is no doubt that they will find a common [and] militant language."

The head of the Council of Jewish Settlements of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District (Yesha), Benny Kashriel, welcomed the choice of Ben-Eliezer as Labor's nominee for the position of defense minister.

"Minister Ben-Eliezer is an old friend of the settlement enterprise in Yesha," Kashriel said, adding that the long personal relationship between himself and Ben-Eliezer was a basis for an understanding on all matters related to the security of Israel and the settlements.

"The Yesha Council expects Ben-Eliezer and Sharon to bring about the desired turnaround in Israel's security policy, replacing the soaking up [of violence] and capitulation [of the outgoing administration] with initiative and victory," Kashriel said.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/3/93.htm