Worth reading as usual:
Essay: Nothing to lose
By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI
According to polls taken after the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a majority of Israelis agree that the attack has made us more vulnerable to terrorism. Yet that same majority - which presumably will pay the price in the form of revenge attacks by Hamas - believes the assassination was not only justified, but inevitable.
That's because most Israelis, including me, understand that the Yassin killing was no mere act of vengeance or the frustrated tantrum of a government unable to stop terrorism after three years of war. Instead, it was a carefully conceived gamble, prompted by immediate security needs and long-term psychological calculations.
Though the world didn't seem to notice, Hamas crossed a red line on March 14, when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the port of Ashdod. What stunned Israelis about that attack wasn't the casualty rate: 10 dead and dozens wounded is now considered only a mid-level atrocity. Instead, it was that the bombers had penetrated a strategic site and blown themselves up near storage tanks containing toxic chemicals. Only their ineptitude prevented a mega-attack that could have claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.
The next day, the government announced it was renewing its policy of targeted assassinations against Hamas leaders. That is meant to force Hamas into a defensive mode so that rather than planning attacks, it is protecting its operation. True, in the coming weeks the opposite may well occur as Hamas and its Fatah allies rage against Israeli society. The gamble, though, is that an ongoing assault on Hamas in Gaza will gradually reduce its operational capacity - which has, in fact, happened in the West Bank. In the past two years, the almost daily suicide bombings and attempted bombings emanating from the West Bank have dropped to barely one deadly attack a month - the Israeli equivalent of good news.
Israelis understand that the war on terror isn't a "cycle of violence" ut an existential struggle that defines our ability to survive in the Middle East.
Anxious as I am about the new wave of terrorism likely to be released by the Yassin killing, I'd be more afraid of living in an Israel that wouldn't attack those who try to destroy us.
Beyond military considerations, there's a crucial psychological justification for targeting Hamas leaders. That is especially urgent as Israel prepares to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. While a majority of the public supports Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intention to leave within 18 months, many worry the move will only further encourage terrorists.
Even Israelis like myself who support a unilateral departure - as the only realistic alternative to our inability to occupy the Palestinians or to make peace with them - nevertheless worry about a repeat of the disastrous consequences of our pullout from Lebanon four years ago, under pressure from Hizbullah. As a result of Israel's seemingly panicked retreat, Palestinian leaders concluded that the "Hizbullah option" could work for them as well. If Hizbullah could demoralize the public by inflicting two dozen casualties a year on the IDF, then surely a terrorist war aimed at Israel's heartland would force the public to surrender the territories, without any reciprocal Palestinian concessions.
IN FACT, the opposite has happened. Israelis have defiantly maintained their daily routine, even returning to quickly renovated bombed cafes. The refusal to concede our public space to terrorism has provoked a debate in the Palestinian media during the past year over the effectiveness of the terrorist strategy, especially in the post-September 11 world. Tragically, that debate has not focused on the disastrous moral consequences for Palestinian society of turning suicide bombers into religious martyrs and educational role models for Palestinian children - and, even more monstrous, the new terrorist tactic of recruiting children as suicide bombers. Still, Israeli resilience has produced signs of Palestinian fatigue, within both the leadership and the public.
In recent weeks, though, Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza has prompted yet another shift in Palestinian discourse. Palestinian newspapers have published cartoons mocking Sharon as a vanquished coward; just before his death, Yassin gloated that Hamas had won. In the Middle East, weakness invites attack. Indeed, the terrorist assault on Ashdod was intended, in part, to emphasize Hamas's message that Israel is fleeing from Gaza under fire.
By assassinating Yassin, the government hopes to prove to the Palestinians that our disillusionment with the occupation isn't the same as defeatism. That message of resolve is also tacitly aimed at Sharon's right-wing critics. "If withdrawal isn't done out of weakness but strength, then I'll go along," one veteran Likud supporter told me after the Yassin assassination. That response is widespread on the pragmatic, non-settler Right.
The effort to destroy the Hamas leadership is also an attempt to preempt a Hamas takeover of Gaza after Israel pulls out. While for now Yassin's assassination has increased Hamas's popularity among Palestinians, the long-term goal of the targeted killings is to deprive that organization of its ability to govern and to ensure the continued control of the Palestinian Authority over Gaza.
Few of us take seriously the argument that eliminating Hamas's "political" leadership will only further radicalize the group. Debates within Hamas, after all, are merely tactical; no one contests the goal of destroying Israel. The Hamas Covenant invokes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and its notion of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. Suicide bombings, supported by both pragmatists and extremists, are projections of its genocidal fantasies.
MEANWHILE, WE try to maintain the pretense of daily life and ignore Hamas's latest threat to bring death to the doorstep of every Israeli home. For residents of my Jerusalem neighborhood, at least, that threat has already been realized.
Ten days ago, a jogger across the street from my apartment was killed in a drive-by terrorist shooting. The victim turned out to be a young Arab man who routinely came here to jog, perhaps because jogging isn't part of the culture in his Arab neighborhood. Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades claimed credit for the murder, then apologized when the victim's identity became known. Fatah meant: Sorry, we thought he was a Jew.
The murder happened just after sunset as we were setting the Shabbat table. The message was clear: You can hide from us by avoiding crowded places, but in the end we'll find you, even in your quiet neighborhoods.
But there was another, unintended message: When we gun you down outside your homes, you no longer have anything to lose. Which is why we have responded to the terrorists with a reciprocal declaration of total war.
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