"The Israeli government is building fences, walls and trenches along about 30 miles of the Green Line."

BAT HEFER, Israel (AP - 26 July) - An orange swingset and large crawling tubes beckon children to a playground in this quiet village a half-hour's drive from Tel Aviv, but a faint crackling noise explains why no one answers the call.

``Warning! Electric fence'' read signs in Hebrew and Arabic hanging on a forbidding barrier that - along with coils of barbed wire and a concrete wall - separate Bat Hefer and its neat cottages from dusty fields in the West Bank city of Tulkarem.

The barrier runs along the ``Green Line,'' once the border between Israel and the West Bank, but largely erased since Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

Now parts of the invisible 180-mile frontier, which runs through desert valleys, cotton fields and alongside Tel Aviv bedroom communities, have re-emerged.

The Israeli government is building fences, walls and trenches along about 30 miles of the Green Line, at a cost of $1.25 million, to protect Israelis from shooting and bomb attacks, a frequent occurrence during the 10-month-old Palestinian uprising.

Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said the long-term plan is to have fences cover much of the former frontier.

This leads some to conclude that brick by brick, Israel is erecting a border with the Palestinians - even though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is opposed to a so-called ``unilateral separation'' advocated by his predecessor, Ehud Barak.

``In some ways, cumulatively, it could in certain places take on the character of a border,'' said Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher.

The final border was to have been drawn in peace talks. But negotiations broke down in January and prospects for a resumption, let alone a successful conclusion, are dim during the current climate of violence and recriminations.

Barak has said that in the meantime, Israel should unilaterally draw a border east of the old frontier, within the West Bank, to enhance Israel's security. This would mean that some Jewish settlements deep in the Palestinian area would either be dismantled or end up cut off from Israel.

Sharon has said he would not dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank and barriers running along the Green Line would strengthen claims by the 200,000 settlers that they are being abandoned by their government.

There is also concern that a unilateral border could undercut Israel's position in future peace talks.

Perhaps because of the political complexities, the government has been working on the project quietly and somewhat reluctantly.

``This is meant to protect residents in the area,'' Dror said. ``We're trying not to get into anything now that will be political.''

The first stretches of cement walls and barbed wire fences, to be built along dozens of Israeli communities bordering the West Bank, will be completed by the end of the year, he said.

In Bat Hefer, border police jeeps patrol a cement wall that was built by residents in 1996, when the community was established. Two weeks ago, the Defense Ministry erected an electric fence alongside the wall. The fence will eventually run for more than six miles to the south, alongside several farming communities.

In this area, Palestinian militants have infiltrated in recent months through orange orchards and along dirt roads into the crowded Tel Aviv metropolitan area to carry out deadly bombings.

While the fences are meant to give residents a feeling of security, Palestinians can still get around them, and Israelis living near the West Bank demand a continuous barrier.

``In each and every place that they come in freely we need to put a wall, a barrier or an electric fence,'' said Benny Yaacobi, the secretary of Bat Hefer, while looking across the wall at the outlying fields of Tulkarem.

Houses abutting the West Bank in the area have been shot at about 30 times in recent months and Palestinians placed a suitcase full of explosives on the wall once, Yaacobi said. No one has been injured in the incidents.

Electric fences will also run for dozens of miles west of the West Bank town off Jenin, and south and north of Jerusalem, Dror said.

The government expects the barriers to remain for some time, he said.

Yet area residents are not satisfied and are pushing for complete separation from the Palestinians.

``We have been talking about this physical separation from the Palestinians for years,'' said Yitzhak Yehoshua, the chairman of the Lev Hasharon regional council northeast of Tel Aviv.

``I don't have any doubt that this is the only solution. We wish there could be another way because we wanted peace. But it's not possible now.''

"The IDF's top brass are firm believers in a very dangerous operational philosophy, according to which, Palestinian military activity can be wiped out through the use of massive military force."

Haaretz - July 26, 2001: When senior Israel Defense Forces commanders were shown a plan for rescuing an IDF soldier wounded at the site of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus at the start of the present Intifada, the plan was rejected because the commanders feared the rescue would cost many lives. A bitter debate ensued among the top brass in the wake of the decision to allow Border Patrol officer Mahdet Yusuf to bleed to death. The IDF's senior command justified the decision on the grounds that the need to prevent a massive loss of human lives outweighed the possibility of saving onesoldier. The voices of protest quickly died away.

It is essential to refer once more to this incident, because a study is being made of the IDF's operational plans for a "major military operation" that will be launched if politicians give the green light. And if the IDF ends up capturing Jenin, Nablus or Hebron, as former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding, it is estimated that hundreds of Israeli soldiers will die in the fighting. The IDF does not have much experience in combat in urban areas; however, it has accumulated sufficient experience for the top brass to realize how costly such fighting is in terms of military casualties. It is quite likely that, in response to such an operation, the Palestinians will opt for house-to-house combat. IDF tanks are quite capable of destroying many houses and thereby causing the death of many civilians, while Israel Air Force fighter jets would fire missiles at the "places where the shooting is coming from." Nonetheless, in the final analysis, Israeli infantry units would be forced to seize control of the city in question through combat on the ground.

The IDF's top brass are firm believers in a very dangerous operational philosophy, according to which, Palestinian military activity can be wiped out through the use of massive military force. When the IAF commander enthusiastically justifies the routine use of fighter jets to strike individuals located in a residential district and does not understand what all the hue and cry is about (because, in the IAF commander's view, there is no essential difference between the use of light weapons and the deployment of combat aircraft) and when the IDF chief of staff does not grasp the far-reaching implications of the use of fighter jets against civilian targets, then one should not besurprised to find that the capture of communities within Area A has become a logical and reasonable objective.

If a war breaks out, it will be a bizarre, and above all, unnecessary, military confrontation, fueled by the kind of political culture that has taken root here in Israel and which the IDF has assiduously nurtured. According to this political culture, every problem has a military solution. This war will also be bizarre because its planners have been unable to come up with a single reasonable goal - except the satisfaction of the Israeli public's desire for revenge.

Had the IDF top brass decided upon a different line of action, they would not have presented their war plans to the ministers in Ariel Sharon's cabinet, but would have warned them that such a war would be idiotic. After the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, then chief of staff Dan Shomron categorically stated that there was no military solution to the problem of the Intifada. This was the courageous declaration of a general who clearly understood that there was a limit to the power of the military force he commanded.

However, in the IDF of 2001, the atmosphere is quite different. The top brass have, for the past few months, been sending out signals that they do have a military solution to the problem of Palestinian terror. They are broadcasting this message despite the fact that the IDF has failed to deal effectively with the Palestinians and is continuing to battle guerrillas and terrorists as if it were fighting against a regular army. Today, the IDF senior command is even proposing expanding its misguided military operations.

The chief of staff and his colleagues have so far been unable to overcome their military myopia and, at times, refuse to take into account the impact their military plans could have on the broad political picture. Granted, it is very difficult to stand fast in the face of heavy pressure from both the public and saber-rattling politicians. But nonetheless, in addition to being the commander who gives IDF troops the orders to shoot, the chief of staff is a key player in the decision-making process in Israel. Given the absence of independent, professional consultative bodies outside the apparatus of government, the IDF is the sole institution capable of recommending policy guidelines to both the prime minister and the ministers in the Israeli cabinet.

Thus, the chief of staff has a unique responsibility - as the last barrier to a total loss of control over the situation. When cabinet ministers demand that Israel go to war, the supreme commander of the IDF must spell out to them what the basic significance of such a move would be. He must spell out to them that a war against the Palestinian Authority could lead to a regional war. And he must remind them that the period when Israel was the omnipotent police officer in the Middle East is over.

The problem is that it is by no means certain whether Shaul Mofaz is the right person for such a difficult mission.

JERUSALEM POST - JERUSALEM, July 27 - The US is pressing Israel to begin counting seven "quiet" days, and then move quickly into the Mitchell program, not because of any objective change on theground, but because of US considerations in the Persian Gulf, a diplomatic source close to the prime minister said yesterday.

In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns said yesterday that the US hopes to move quickly beyond the cease-fire phase of the Mitchell Committee plan, and believes ongoing hostilities illustrate "there is a real urgency to moving forward." "Our hope is to move into the cooling off period as soon as possible," Burns said.

"It could be that the US at this time is less oriented toward what is going to work, but motivated more by a need to deliver something because of political concerns on the Gulf," the official said.

The official added that Iraq is at the top of the US's list of foreign policy priorities, and since its policy of "smart sanctions" against Iraq has failed, the US is thinking ahead to the need to rebuild an alliance with the Gulf Sates in the struggle against Saddam Hussein. The US is under pressure from its Arab allies to give something in return, namely to begin the Mitchell plan now.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seemed to allude to the same reading of the situation when he told a Likud faction meeting in Ariel yesterday that "the United States has their own interests and wants to bring the Arab countries closer in order to increase their activities with Iraq. Should this not trigger a red light?"

Zalman Shoval, a foreign policy adviser to Sharon, said that "somewhere in the background there is an American interest to plan something with regards to Iraq, and one of the elements in that is to smooth things over with the different Arab countries." Shoval said that he has "no doubt" that there is "some sort of Arab pressure on the Americans" to pressure Israel.

At the same time, he said, Israel needs to make it clear that although it recognizes the importance of the US building an alliance against Iraq, Israel should not have to pay for it. "In the end of the day the problem between us and the Palestinians has to be solved in relevance to what is happening here, not some sort of fop to other Arab countries not directly involved," Shoval said.

Another diplomatic source said that "although Israel is supportive of regional stability, it does not want to be put into position of paying the price for that stability - that is a potential concern, but not yet a real imminent threat." Burns made his comments about the cooling off period before the House International Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.

"While there have been periods of relative calm since the secretary's visit to the region in mid-June, they've been broken by renewed acts of violence death and destruction followed by reprisals and retaliation. There is a real urgency to moving forward," Burns added.

The subcommittee hearing was devoted to US relations with the Palestinians.

A State Department official said a senior administration official, possibly deputy assistant secretary of state David Satterfield, would travel to the region again next week to once again try to get the parties to adhere to the Mitchell Committee recommendations and to discuss what type of third-party monitoring presence they would accept.

Burns testified yesterday that US officials have "done some very preliminary thinking" about monitors. He emphasized throughout his testimony that the US was focused first on getting the parties to the cooling-off phase of the Mitchell plan, during which the sides are to take reciprocal confidence-building steps.

One idea being discussed by the Americans is to model the monitors on the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group that oversaw the 1996 April understandings between Israel and Hizbullah

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/306.htm