The following three articles published in Israel over the weekend help explain the preparations under way and ask some of the right questions:

[Ha'aretz. Sunday, July 8, 2001] While the prime minister declares to his interviewers that war is not in the offing, his ministerial colleagues are deep in expectations for the coming war with the Palestinians. "Preparing for war," is the standard answer now in the corridors of power to the regular question, "What's going on?" Ministers, senior officials and, of course, the top officials in the defense establishment and the IDF all say it. Given the current mood of the nation's stewards, the coming war is a matter of destiny, an inevitable development, whose outbreak depends only on the timing of the next terror attack and the number of resulting casualties.This forecast requires some analysis. Is war the only logical conclusion of the current confrontation with the Palestinians? Are the expectations about it what really will happen? Is the price being taken into consideration? Can its scope and development be controled, the way its planners assume?

The political lobby for bringing the violent conflict with the Palestinians to a military decision is well known; it is led by the settlers and their right-wing representatives in the government - not only Avigdor Lieberman, Rehavam Ze'evi and Natan Sharanksy, but also a large number of the Likud ministers. There's a clear majority among the decision makers now in favor of going to war.

The logic behind the concept is that the state can not absorb more and more victims of terrorism, that the current methods of fighting Palestinian murders are not effective enough, that the IDF's deterrent capabilities must be proven once again to the Palestinian people and leadership and to the entire Arab world lest Israel end up bleeding forever and becoming weaker and weaker. Behind the demand to declare real war on the Palestinians is also the assumption that a major military blow will return tranquillity to the state and end the 10-month nightmare of terror.

Most of the Labor ministers will also take up the cry after the next major terror attack. A bloodletting as massive as what happened at the Dolphinarium will create a psychological and emotional reaction in the public that will sweep (almost) the entire government, which will decide to flip the safety switch and order the IDF to go into the planned battle. This is supposed to deliver the knockout blow to the Palestinian Authority.

The stage, therefore, has been set for the outbreak of the next wear: wall-to-wall political approval for a military solution to the current crisis, the appropriate international preparations during the period of restraint.

But this scenario has some flaws that should be considered before the IDF opens its all-out assault on the PA.

Will it indeed be the kind of fatal blow that forces Yasser Arafat (or his heirs) to accept Israel's dictates? In other words, is there a reasonable chance that after the blow there will be quiet, though not necessarily a political settlement, or will in fact the blow result in an even deadlier reaction? Does the expectation that the IDF will solve the psychological and political Gordian knot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with one blow take into account the cost in lives (for both sides)? Can anyone guarantee that the war won't spill out of the West Bank and Gaza into the neighboring countries?

The last question is Ariel Sharon's conundrum. If he moves the government to authorize war on the Palestinian Authority, he'll expose Israel to the dangers of regional and international complications. A full-scale war will result in international intervention that (in the best of circumstances) will require him to present far-reaching political proposals to neutralize the impression created by a military blow in Gaza and the West Bank. And if he tries to avoid that by ordering only a limited military operation, it won't do anything, or may exacerbate, the very circumstances that now create the conditions for a major war.

Conclusion: As far as can already be seen, war - small, medium-sized or large - is not a solution to the current crisis

Ha'aretz Sunday, July 8, 2001 What would happen if the Palestinian cabinet were to meet and afterward press reports spoke of the existence of a list of 26 to 30 senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who were being targeted for liquidation? What would happen if the Palestinian cabinet were then to decide to "extend the strike operations" against IDF officers who are the commanders of units that are engaged in liquidating Palestinians or against the planners of those actions? What would happen is that Israel would stir up a tremendous worldwide fuss. We would brand that cabinet a "regime of terror" - and rightly so.In the middle of last week, a momentous event occurred in Israel: the kitchen cabinet, followed the next day by the security cabinet, decided to "extend the strikes against Palestinian terror activists." The decision was made public, as was the existence of a list of between 26 and 30 names of people who are targeted for liquidation.

What was done until now by undercover means, usually without an explicit Israeli admission, has now become official policy, quasi- legitimate. What the international community terms execution without trial, a method used by mafias and ruthless regimes - and even they rarely admit to it, and certainly don't flaunt it - has become part of the declared policy of a country that prides itself on adhering to the rule of law.

Admitting to carrying out liquidations and their transformation into official policy are another stage in Israel's moral deterioration. So too with the expansion of the list of targets for liquidation: no longer only "ticking bombs" (terrorists on their way to perpetrate an attack), but also the planners of such attacks - "even if their preparations have not reached an advanced stage" - according to the reports from the kitchen cabinet.

The danger of the slide down the "slippery slope," a term that is used in struggles for the preservation of human rights, always lurks for a regime of law and morality from the moment it begins to depart from that policy. Suffice it to see the evolution of the torture policy: First the state denied its existence for years, then it was forced to admit reluctantly to the use of torture, and finally its use was institutionalized - in the form of decisions by the security cabinet and ministerial committees, and with the backing of a Supreme Court justice, approving the use of certain means but not others - until the High Court of Justice finally put a stop to it, years too late.

The targets of torture also changed: first only "ticking bombs," and finally thousands of Palestinians, almost everyone interrogated by the Shin Bet security service. The state told its interrogators: Torture as much as you feel like; now it is telling its soldiers: Step up the liquidations. The moral, legal and public relations implications, as well as the practical consequences, are extremely grave.

International law, which Israel - despite all its efforts - cannot ignore, certainly not at present, does not forbid the liquidation of individuals who are on their way to perpetrate a terrorist attack. No one disputes that a terrorist who is about to kill innocent civilians should be stopped by all means including his physical elimination. It is the expansion of this circle, however little, that signals the deterioration.

Since Israel launched its policy of liquidation, it has crossed that red line flagrantly: Anwar Himran had just emerged from the university, books in hand, his wife by his side, when 20 bullets struck him; Dr. Tabath Tabath had just left his house on the way to his clinic, as far as anyone knows, when he was cut down; nor, apparently, was Samiah Malaba on his way to perpetrate a terrorist attack when a mobile phone blew up in his face in Kalandia. Were these people innocent civilians? Probably not. Did they deserve to die? Absolutely not.

Now the killing of people like them has become officially declared policy. And the further expansion of the circle is only a matter of time. Will we liquidate yesterday's terrorists? And what about tomorrow's terrorist who is just embarking on that road. And why not their accomplices? And why not the terrorist's brother, whose killing may have a deterrent effect?

Israel, which is trying to decide on the right way to combat terrorism, must abstain from illegal and immoral methods such as these executions. There are some things a state does not do. Period. Some of those who were liquidated could have been arrested and brought to trial. In a situation where their is no true supervision over the identity of those who are liquidated - the Shin Bet does not have a reputation of totally avoiding the blurring of the truth - it is highly unlikely that individuals whom Israel claims were liquidated because they were on their way to perpetrate a terrorist attack, were in fact engaged in that activity. It is very doubtful that this despicable method, which is condemned by the entire world, including the United States, is as effective as its practitioners would have us believe: many liquidations in fact generated the next terrorist attack.

An equally dubious proposition is the contention that liquidations are preferable to harming the civilian population. The fact is that Israel, which late last week demolished the homes of hundreds of shepherds in the southern Mount Hebron region in revenge for the murder of the settler Yair Har-Sinai from Sussya, is both eliminating wanted individuals and harming innocent civilian populations.

The government's need to "do something" against terrorism is leading it to adopt unconscionable methods. Its need to show Israeli public opinion that "something is being done" has led it to make public its shameful decisions and thus to give them validation that undercuts its moral status even further. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz - will one day be held to account for such decisions; and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, too, to whose credit it can be said that he was outraged by the publication of the liquidation decisions last week, will not entirely be able to escape blame

July 5, 2001 On July 3, after an Israeli from the settlement of Susiya in the southern West Bank was found murdered, and without any suspects being identified or arrested, the Israeli army unleashed an unprecedented campaign of revenge and ethnic cleansing against the entire civilian Palestinian population of the area. (The same day the Israeli government authorized a wholescale campaign of assassinations as well.) As this is being written, we are in the third day of this campaign.

The first 24 hours witnessed the demolition of at least five Palestinian homes in the city of Yata, which was completely sealed off to the outside world, leaving the army to act with impunity towards the civilian inhabitants. Reports are that up to a thousand residents were forced from their homes before demolishing dozens of them. The army also attacked residents in the entire rural area between Yata and the area around Jibna where the Palestinian "cave-dwellers" live. Additional houses were demolished, wells and reservoirs destroyed and the agricultural infrastructure severely damaged. Even the Channel 1 Israel news spoke of the army as acting out of "revenge." If this is so, the Israeli army, which once prided itself as a "defense" force whose moral code included "purity of arms," has been reduced into a mere gang. The fact that no outside observers were allowed into the entire West Bank south of Hebron during this 24-hour period, including journalist and human rights observers, and even the Red Cross was prevented from providing humanitarian aid to the hundreds of families affected, raises fears about acts of violence and intimidation committed with absolute impunity by an army against a defenseless civilian population (most of the area affected is in Israeli-controlled Area C). Not only does international law forbid such actions, but the Fourth Geneva Convention requires Israel as an occupying power to protect the civilian population under its rule and provide for its welfare.

Among the families whose dwellings were destroyed was Rasmiya Nawaja Jamal, a woman in her 60s whose husband Mohammad was murdered by settlers from Susiya ten years ago (no one was ever tried). Rasmiya, who ekes out a living as a shepherd, managed to raise 12 children on her own, the family living in an underground cave. Since her compound is situated close to Susiya, the family has endured harassment for many years, including settlers riding horses through her living area. Two years ago the Israeli Civil Administration demolished the cave, claiming that the Nawaja family had no permit to live there. Rasmiya then constructed an ingenious compound over her demolished cave, made of skeletons of automobiles. She and her smaller children lived in the shell of a mini-van, her son and his family lived in the cab of a truck, and a pick-up truck was converted into a stable. Rasmiya used the fenders to fence off her gardens, and even constructed a cooking area of solar panels. On Tuesday morning the army returned and destroyed Rasmiya's compound, as well as those of her neighbors, making more than 50 people homeless. They also uprooted more than 1000 olive trees belonging to Rasmiya and her neighbors, and destroyed all their cisterns.

This morning we received word that Civil Administration bulldozers were destroying homes, farming structures and cisterns in the area of Jibna. This is where, two years ago, the Israeli army tried to force the area's 3,000 farming families out of their cave dwellings where they had lived for generations. In October, 1999, the Israeli army declared their lands -- some 100,000 dunams of land (25,000 acres) south of Hebron -- as a "closed military area." (In fact, this was only one of 16 orders closing vast tracts of land throughout the West Bank at that time.) The land, though semi-arid and rural, is home to an entire society of Palestinian farmers who had farmed and grazed that area for centuries, developing a unique culture around the many caves that dotted the mountainous landscape. The expulsion order affected, at that time, around 42 families, consisting of around 730 people (among them some 500 children), who were violently and brutally driven from their homes.

They army claimed they needed the land for a "firing zone," but in fact it is coveted because it connects the Israeli city of Arad with the settlements of the area and creates a corridor from Israel to Kiryat Arba and Hebron. At that time ICAHD and other Israeli human rights organizations initiated an appeal to the Supreme Court, which ruled in March of 2000 that the families would be allowed to stay in their homes until the issue of their residence was resolved. Since that time, the Civil Administration has admitted it cannot find fault with the families' claims to the land. Today's action, then, was intended to by-pass the Supreme Court by simply demolishing the houses under the guise of "security." One of the caves, belonging to the family of Musa Jabarin, was demolished today, together with four other houses, a number of cisterns and many farming structures essential for the economic survival of the community. Clothes, furniture, dead chickens, pieces of pens and chicken coops lie scattered over the ground. (Pictures will be posted on the AIC website: www.alternativenews.org). Many other families were ordered to remove their belongings and preparations were made to demolish their homes as well. But an appeal to the Attorney General's Office has resulted in the Civil Administration being ordered to desist -- at least for the time being.

It should be noted that according to Amnesty International Israel has demolished at least 7000 Palestinian homes since 1967, to which more than 500 have to added since the Alaqsa Intifada began.

At a time when Sharon is being feted by the Chancellor of Germany and the President of France, Israel's occupation and the actions it engenders stands in stark violation of international law. Collective punishment is explicitly forbidden in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the demolition of houses constitutes a grave violation of Article 53. The increasing use of international courts to enforce accountability to human rights covenants (upon which Israel itself has signed) should put the Israeli government and its agents on notice that they may find themselves one day being tried for war and civil crimes. Besides the simple injustice and moral indefensibility of such actions...

* Jeff Halper is Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and Editor of "News From Within".

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/271.htm