Lessons of Hadera
Wednesday's bombing in Hadera teaches us several lessons
IDF officers arrived at Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz's office Wednesday in a fighting mood. Their basic plan is to embark on an ongoing operation to rid the northern West Bank of Islamic Jihad.
Nahum Barnea, Israel’s leading political commentator, writes for Yedioth AhronothLast summer, IDF paratroopers were called upon to clean the Jihad out of the city of Nablus and its surrounding villages. The brigade commander had a list of names and addresses, and soldiers went from house to house.
As a result, Jihad lost – temporarily – its hold on the city. The rest of northern Samaria should be similar.
In the immediate term, the number of attacks might well rise: as we learned Wednesday at the Hadera market, Islamic Jihad knows how to exact revenge.
In the medium term, the number of attacks should fall as those responsible are jailed or killed.
In the long term, however, targeted assassinations won't change much, and that is the depressing part. A new generation of terrorists will replace assassinated ones, no less murderous than its predecessors.
The case of Louie Sa'adi is definite proof to this vicious circle. He went to an Israeli jail as an unimportant Jihad activist. When he came out as part of the cursed agreement for then-Hizbullah prisoner Elhanan Tannenbaum, he was a senior terrorist, trained, and only 25 years old.
The Palestinian Authority was afraid to touch him. Israel's security establishment invested resources - an army source may have exaggerated yesterday when he told me the army spent millions of shekels - to detain him.
The hunt for him didn't prevent him from carrying out serious, “quality” attacks before being killed in a shootout on Monday.
No one promised Israeli citizens that things would quiet down in Israel following the Gaza withdrawal. If anyone harbored such expectations, they were in vain. Israel's withdrawal from Gaza righted a wrong. It did not bring about peace.
The problems lie herein. One, terrorism is supported and strengthened by outside forces, primarily Iran. Iran is quickly becoming Israel's number one problem. But Iran is not a problem we can tackle alone. We need America's strong hand, but America's hands are currently tied up in Iraq.
The U.S. government is done attacking the Middle East. What a shame it stumbled along the way and attacked the wrong country.
The second problem is the Palestinian Authority, which continues to disintegrate. Mahmoud Abbas can travel to Washington and bask in praise from President Bush, but in practice he can't create steady rule.
The Palestinians themselves are the ones primarily affected by this, but Israel pays a price as well. The occupation continues, even in Gaza, as do rocket attacks on Sderot. And terrorism.
The third problem is the security fence. As of this writing, it is unclear just where the bomber crossed the fence, whether he traveled south to an area where the fence has not yet been completed, or whether he was smuggled through one of the crossings in the existing fence.
But the truth remains that the fence was breached. The security establishment tries to hide this scandal, for political reasons. The fence has cost billions of shekels. Crossings for the Palestinians have cost hundreds of millions, and are fitted with the newest, most modern security equipment in the world.
At the same time, Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike continue to cross the fence in and out of the West Bank without real security checks. It was a Jew who ferried the suicide bomber to his attack at the Hasharon Mall in Netanya by posing as a settler.
A Jew, or Arab Israeli, can easily smuggle the next suicide bomber.
All plans to give settlers magnetic cards while carefully checking everybody else, to place police officers at entrances to the West bank and to set up inspection stations at exit points, have failed because of political objection on the part of the settlers.
"We built a concrete wall," one officer told me, “but we fitted it will paper doors.” This is not tragedy. This is stupidity.
