April 3, 2002	Wednesday	Muharram 19,1423

AL QUDS: The images of Yasser Arafat sealed in his office by Israeli armour obscure a central point - that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is as boxed in as he is. The trap for Sharon is to pursue a military ‘victory’ in a conflict in which Israel’s massive superiority in arms, technology and training counts for little. The more aggressively Sharon attacks Palestinian towns and refugee camps, and the more resolutely he moves against Arafat, the more elusive is the definition of Israeli ‘victory.’

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not just a battle between two peoples over one piece of land, it is a self- destructive contest of national wills. In such a war, fanaticism is a potent weapon, and there the Palestinians and their growing legions of suicide bombers have the edge.

“Palestinian terror has changed its face,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a widely read columnist in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “In 1982 it was the job of professionals. Today it is popular sport, the grand aspiration of thousands of Palestinian girls and boys. You can kill, deport and deter professionals. There is no military way to fight suicide bombers.”

As Israeli terrorism experts have pointed out, the infrastructure of suicide bombing requires little more than bomb- making know-how and some very basic equipment. If an explosives belt can be assembled in a work shed or a chicken coop or a garage, then destroying the “infrastructure of terrorism” begins to sound virtually impossible, more a slogan than a battle plan.

In fact, there are signs the Israeli government does not know exactly what goal it is pursuing against the Palestinians, or how the end game might be played out. Government ministers and army generals are increasingly frank about Israel’s need to punish the Palestinians or “teach them a lesson” for turning to violence and terror, although it is usually phased in terms of “reestablishing Israel’s strategic deterrence.”

“The army can easily occupy the cities of the West Bank but the army cannot make the Palestinians surrender and certainly not eliminate the terror,” wrote Roni Shaked, military correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth. “The slogan to ‘root out terror’ is a vain illusion.”

The more Sharon tightens the noose around Arafat, the louder the international outcry - especially in Europe and the Arab world - insisting that Arafat is indispensable to an eventual resolution to the crisis. The more Sharon insists on expelling Arafat from the Palestinian territories, the more he alarms moderates in his own cabinet, who would torpedo his governing coalition if they bolted.

If Arafat is expelled, as Sharon and some of his hard-line allies wish, he could become an even greater hero in the Arab world and among Palestinians than he already is. If Arafat were killed by Israeli forces, in intentionally or not, his death would likely inspire waves of attacks for years to come, Israeli security officials believe.

When the Israeli cabinet convened before dawn Friday to discuss its response to the deaths of 22 people by a suicide bomber last week, Sharon and the moderates settled on a compromise - to “isolate” Arafat “at this stage.” It remains unclear what purpose is served by Arafat’s isolation.

Some Israeli military officers say that no military “victory” can be achieved against the Palestinians, who are not fighting a conventional war but rather something akin to a war of attrition.

The goal of the current campaign, they assert, is to force Arafat to accept a cease-fire under terms proposed by the US peace envoy, Anthony Zinni - and, eventually, return to political negotiations.

But when the Israeli army chief of staff, Lt-Gen Shaul Mofaz, floated that idea over the weekend in a cabinet meeting, Sharon was having none of it. “What are you talking about?” the prime minister snapped at his army chief, according to the Israeli media. “There aren’t going to be any diplomatic negotiations here.”

Evicting Palestinians would make Israel a pariah state, endanger its relations with the United States, risk a regional war and invite never-ending attacks. Mass arrests have been tried without tremendous success. And the current course, even if followed more intensively, seems unlikely to eradicate attacks.

“If Sharon wants to take Arafat and us into hell, I promise you that we will take Sharon into hell with us,” said Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian security chief in the Gaza Strip. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.