The Terror That Will Not Quit

QUIQUE KIERSZENBAUM/GETTY IMAGES
An Israeli border policeman stands guard in downtown Jerusalem

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At the same time, the Bush Administration opted not to criticize Israel for threatening to march back into West Bank towns. For several weeks, Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter has told Sharon that the only way to prevent terrorist attacks is to take full control of Palestinian cities until a fence along the West Bank's border with Israel can be erected. Completing just the first phase of the wall could take as long as eight months to a year.

With Determined Path, Israeli security officials hope to finish what they started with Defensive Shield. Under U.S. and European pressure, Sharon wrapped up the first operation faster than the army or Shin Bet liked. The armed forces wanted four months; Sharon gave them one. By the time Israel ended the campaign in the final days of April, it had arrested Hamas' top and mid-level activists, according to Israeli intelligence, but hadn't worked down to the legmen who carry out surveillance on target locations and run errands for the bombmakers during the planning of operations. Of 90 activists in the Nablus Hamas cell known to Israeli intelligence, only the top 60 were arrested or killed. Mohana Taher was among the low-level Hamas men who remained at large. With his superiors arrested or dead, Taher, 26, took control of the Nablus cell and plotted al-Ghoul's operation, Israeli officials say.

The new campaign is also targeting what the Israelis call ha-Masterim (the Masters). In Defensive Shield, Israeli forces picked up or killed all the Hamas men they knew of in the West Bank who had mastered the precise formulas for homemade explosives. But according to Israeli intelligence, a few top Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip slipped through Israeli security to the West Bank and have begun to produce explosives there, reinvigorating the West Bank wing of the group that had been on the ropes during and just after Defensive Shield.

Sending his soldiers back into Palestinian towns for a prolonged period is a risky strategy for Sharon. Though the move suits his party, the hawkish Likud, it is unpopular with his coalition partners from the centrist Labor Party. The day after Sharon's decision, Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer, a Labor member, told aides, "I haven't agreed to reconquer any land." Ben-Eliezer's aides say the Israeli troops will probably stay inside the Palestinian towns only a few weeks. Labor doesn't want to see Israel rebuild the system of military government it dismantled when it handed over the towns to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords. As a Defense Ministry official puts it, "We don't want to handle their sewage." Even if Sharon withstands coalition pressures, a prolonged reoccupation would bring international criticism. That risk was underscored when Israeli forces looking for Islamic Jihad activists in Jenin last week opened fire on Palestinian civilians who mistakenly thought that the Israeli-imposed curfew had been lifted. Four Palestinians, including three children, were killed.

There are also operational difficulties in keeping the Palestinian towns under occupation. The army's recent pattern has been to move in for a few days at a time whenever intelligence suggested a terrorist operation was being prepared. Israel's standing army has enough manpower to lock down only two West Bank cities at a time. To control all nine major towns and the largest villages would require a big call-up of reserves. That would be unpopular with a public that has not yet seen a real, permanent improvement in security despite the huge Defensive Shield call-up. Many Labor ministers reason that only peace negotiations with the Palestinians can stop the violence.

Hamas' hard-core supporters have no interest in peace talks; their stated goal is Israel's destruction. But more moderate Palestinians, including some of the people behind the violence, echo Labor's argument. "The Israelis are trying to treat this problem as a military one," says a militant in Jerusalem from Arafat's Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.). "It's not. The Israelis can't stop this through military methods."

Nothing can come of diplomacy, however, unless both leaderships are prepared to stop fighting. Arafat advisers say P.L.O. Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has been urging Arafat to adopt a conciliatory line, ending the violence and restarting peace talks; that at least would placate Washington. In Arafat's Ramallah office last week, Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo criticized Abbas for being "soft with America," according to Arafat aides who were present. By their account, a furious Abbas threw a small plastic bottle at Abed Rabbo's head and stormed out of the office, even as Arafat appealed to the two men to make up. People close to Abbas say he doesn't believe Arafat truly supports his attempts to calm the situation. The Palestinian leader made a statement condemning the suicide attacks against civilians, but if he can't convince his closest advisers that he is sincere, he will have no chance with the Israelis.