Israel takes battle to enemy camp

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), AUG. 1. With its admission that it had carried out the attack in the West Bank town of Nablus yesterday in which two Hamas leaders were killed, Israel has signalled that it has shifted into a new phase of the battle of attrition with the Palestinians. From the casual manner in which it has dismissed condemnatory statements issued by the U.S. and the European Union, it does not appear that Israel will retract in a hurry from its policy of assassinating key Palestinians. Where all this will lead to is, of course, a question no one dares ask because the answers might just be too horrendous to contemplate.

So far in its policy of murdering pre-identified victims, Israel has usually targeted those who actually carry out, or are actively involved in the planning and preparation of terrorist missions. They have either hit would-be bombers or those who are known to have ambushed Israeli soldiers and civilians or Jewish settlers or those who have prepared bombs or planned ambushes. Only on one previous occasion, early in the current intifada, have the Israelis deliberately hit a person who was known more as a political activist than as a militant. That particular attack on a West Bank Fatah leader had come in for such strong condemnation that it led to a belief that such attacks would not be repeated.

In yesterday's attack, missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter gun-ship smashed through the windows of the study centre run by the leading Hamas activist, Jamal Mansour, in Nablus. He, another leading Hamas activist, Jamal Salim, a journalist and three bodyguards, were killed inside the three- storey office. Two boys, aged 7 and 10, who were waiting for their parents on the pavement outside the building were killed when hit by shrapnel. The explosion was so powerful that the two Hamas leaders were said to have been decapitated.

Mansour was associated with the political and social activities of his organisation. Hamas has also been careful about presenting its cadre as belonging clearly to either the political cum social arm or the militant wing the Izzedine al Kassam Brigade. Mansour had been jailed by the Israelis, been among the 400 who were deported across the Lebanon border at the height of the first intifada and placed under administrative detention by the Palestinian Authority. But all these measures against him were taken on account of his political activities and no one seems to have mentioned before that he was in any way associated with militant activities.

Israeli journalists, who are well aware of the situation in the Palestinian territories, do not entirely agree on Mansour's position in the Hamas hierarchy but they do agree that he was one of the leading political personalities of the Islamic movement.

After yesterday's strike, however, Israel has claimed that Mansour and Salim were actively involved in a terrorist cell operating out of Nablus that was deemed responsible for a number of incidents. These two, and perhaps others normally associated with the political wing of Hamas, are believed to have been key in the recruitment of would-be suicide bombers, of preparing them mentally and emotionally and in the timing and choosing of targets. If the Israeli claims are correct, then the two men killed yesterday operated in the interface between political and military activism.

If the Israelis have so shifted from striking only at actual militants to now striking at elements higher up in the hierarchy or operating in the interface between the political and military side, then the situation is escalating very rapidly. Given the Nablus precedent, there is now talk that Mr. Marwan Barghouti, head of the Fatah in the West Bank, could also fall in the category of those who operate in the interface between politics and militancy. If Mr. Barghouti, whom the Israelis have several times accused of direct involvement in militant attacks, is targeted then the next logical step forward in the escalation would be senior officials of the Palestinian Authority itself.

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Section  : International
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