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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Israel's dress rehearsals
By Graham UsherWhile "peace" is being nurtured in Rabat, Cairo and New York, war rages in the West Bank. On 26 August, an Israeli "undercover" operation involving air reconnaissance, helicopters and over a 100 soldiers laid siege to the Palestinian village of Assira Shamaliya near Nablus in pursuit of the "wanted" Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanud. At the end of a battle lasting most of the night, three Israeli soldiers had been killed and over a dozen soldiers and Palestinian civilians had been wounded.
It was the heaviest loss of Israeli life in the West Bank since September 1996, when nine soldiers were killed during the Western Wall tunnel confrontations. It was Israel's biggest military debacle since February 1999, when three Israeli paratroopers were ambushed by Hizbullah guerrillas in south Lebanon. But the question Palestinians are asking is: what do the recent activities of Israel's crack Duvdevan, or "Cherry" undercover squad really signify?
Ostensibly the raid was launched on the basis of information that Abu Hanud had returned to his home village for the first time in four years. Abu Hanud has long been amongst Israel's and the Palestinian Authority's most wanted Hamas fugitives in the West Bank for his alleged role in two suicide bombings in West Jerusalem in 1997 that left 21 dead and scores wounded. But the sheer scale of the Assira Shamaliya operation suggests that Israel had other considerations in mind than simply taking in or taking out Abu Hanud.
Whatever these were, the raid was a military and political disaster. On 27 August a weary Israeli army chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, all but admitted that the three Israeli soldiers had been killed by "friendly fire" -- that is, they had been shot by other Israeli soldiers mistaking them for Abu Hanud and his associates.
Worse -- at least as far as Israel was concerned -- the army had not even got its prey. In the ensuing mêlée caused by the raid, which included dozens of Assira Shamaliya's 8,000 residents taking to the streets to defend their village, Abu Hanud escaped capture first by fleeing to the home of Nidal Daglas and then by giving himself up to the Palestinian police in PA-controlled Nablus. Daglas was not so fortunate. Wounded in the leg and arrested by the army, he then had his house destroyed by the Israelis in reprisal for hosting a "terrorist."
A Palestinian boy in Assira Shamaliya looks at the ruins of a house destroyed by the Israeli army. The demolition came a day after an army raid intended to capture Abu Hanud, who tops Israel's most-wanted list
(photo: AP)
Israeli ministers were swift to gloss over the "serious operational mishap" as best they could. "The bottom line is that Abu Hanud can no longer act," said Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh on 27 August. This is true. But the enormous overkill Israel brought to bear on Abu Hanud's elimination means that it can forget about his extradition from the PA into Israeli custody. "That will never happen, except over our dead bodies," was the brusque response of Jibril Rajoub of the PA's West Bank Preventive Security Force (PSF).
Hanud's successful escape also gave a boost to Hamas. "This is a big victory for the Palestinian people, who will continue their jihad against Israel," said Hamas spokesman, Mahmoud Zahar, in Gaza on 27 August. This is also bravado. For Zahar knows that the arrest of Abu Hanud is the latest in a series of captures and assassinations of high-profile Hamas military leaders in the last two years, born mainly of the unparalleled "coordination" that now exists between Israel, the PA and the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
For example: After the destruction of a Hamas cell in the Israeli town of Taiba in March the Israelis left it to the PSF to mop up the remaining cell members through arrests and raids in Gaza and the West Bank. All of this was accomplished without a shot being fired or a helicopter being launched. Yet in Assira Shamaliyya Israel chose to go it alone. "The Palestinians knew about the [Assira Shamaliya raid] not before but after it happened," admitted Sneh.
The Duvdevan squad also went it alone on 16 August in the Palestinian village of Surda near Ramallah. There, too, a massive Israeli siege was laid against the village in pursuit of Hamas fugitives. There, too, the army prevented all access to the village, including for ambulances. The difference was that there the soldiers shot dead the 72-year old Mahmoud Abdallah, Surda's former mukhtar or mayor, and the head of a family that has never had the slightest affiliation with Hamas or any other Islamist movement. And the suspicion of the Abdallah family is that the killing provided a political cover for what was in fact a military exercise.
If so, Israel's recent assaults in the West Bank may be less about the hunt for Hamas fugitives than dress rehearsals for what would happen if and when Yasser Arafat were to declare a Palestinian state without Israel's saying so. It has long been the commonly held view of both Palestinians and Israelis that the most incendiary points for any realisation of Palestinian sovereignty would be the so-called "B" areas of the West Bank where the PA has civilian responsibilities, but the Israeli army commands overriding military control.
Assira Shamaliya and Surda are in Area B. And perhaps on 16 and 26 August the army, among other objectives, was seeking to signal to Arafat what the future is liable to be like should he refuse to play by the rules of the past. The lesson of Assira Shamaliya, of course, is that Israel can turn the West Bank into south Lebanon anytime it desires, but -- as in south Lebanon -- the casualties will not be on one side only.
