Israel Tries New Strategy, Cuts Troops in Arab Areas

Israel has quietly reduced the number of troops it has in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to save money and to get back to training for conventional warfare, rather than chasing stone-throwers in Palestinian towns and villages.

The reduction suggests that Israel, while still intent on keeping long-term pressure on the Palestinians, has found it difficult to deal with the demands of the Arab revolt. Pledges made no more than six months ago that Israel would assert its authority in every corner of the land--lest a single Palestinian flag wave freely--have evaporated.

“Since there is a reduction, a shrinking of our forces, the consequences are that we are only in the big cities and on the main roads,” said Col. Yitzhak Segev, military commander of the central West Bank area, based in Nablus. “It may have been right to go into every village all the time a few months ago, but that is changed now.”

At one point, Israel kept about 10,000 troops in the West Bank and 10,000 in the Gaza Strip. The numbers have shrunk by perhaps 1,500 in each area, military sources say. Deployment of hundreds of troops of the paramilitary Border Police has made up for part of the reduction, but the total strength is far below what it was at the end of last year.

The numbers do not include thousands of soldiers stationed at numerous army bases on the borders with Jordan and Egypt, at bases inside the territories meant as defense lines in case of invasion and at electronic listening posts aimed at gathering intelligence from Israel’s Arab neighbors.

The reductions in army strength have been noticed by the Palestinians. In Kfar Malek, a village of 2,000 off the main road near Ramallah, the main plaza has been decorated with the red, white, green and black Palestinian flag and color portraits of Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Buildings framing the square are covered with nationalist graffiti and drawings, including a crude depiction of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as a pig.

This is not to say that Israel has abandoned Kfar Malek to Palestinian nationalists. Rather, the tactics employed to maintain control have changed.

Roads Closed

Villagers recall that last year, the army raided Kfar Malek four times, on one occasion sending in as many as 1,000 soldiers to chase suspected stone-throwers. Roads into the village were closed by mounds of sand and rock.

So far this year, there has been only one raid. On April 5, 10 undercover agents came--not in uniform and jeeps but in Palestinian headdress and an Arab taxi. They surprised 15 militants meeting at a house, called in two army trucks and took them off to jail.

“It’s not the army we worry about now,” Samir, a street organizer in Kfar Malek, said. “It’s the intelligence agents who sneak in to arrest us or ambush us.”

Israeli settlers have noted with dismay the declining army role and have taken security into their own hands. In Hebron and the West Bank settlement of Ariel, vigilante squads roam Arab neighborhoods and villages, vandalizing homes and cars and sometimes firing on suspected stone-throwers, all in the name of self-defense.

The army’s role in suppressing the uprising came under fire from within the army and exploded into public view in February when a group of paratroopers confronted Prime Minister Shamir with their qualms about chasing stone-throwers and beating captives.

Demeaning Role

Top officers complained about the demeaning role being forced on the army. “Why should Israeli soldiers chase women hanging PLO flags,” Maj. Gen. Ehud Barak, the deputy chief of staff, asked in January.

Last year, army reservists spent about 60 days in the West Bank and Gaza. This year it will be 42 days, according to Nablus commander Col. Segev, and most of that time will be spent in training rather than on police duty in the territories. “We have to carry out maneuvers,” Segev said. “We have to train. The border we have to protect is our border with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.”

Although what Israel spends on its military is a confidential matter, the issue of shrinking resources has occasionally surfaced in Israeli newspapers. A recent report in Haaretz said that officials estimated the military reduction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will save “millions of shekels.”

The national economy is also a factor, Col. Segev said. Prolonged reserve duty had kept soldiers from their civilian jobs, costing companies hundreds of work hours.

The pullout of troops has resulted in several new strategies. One of the most common is sending groups of soldiers or border police to raid towns or arrest activists, instead of sending small units on perpetual patrol.

“When we find there are lots of stones thrown from a place or that someone has set up a lot of barricades and burning tires, we go in to clear things up,” Col. Segev said. “We also go in at night when we want to surprise someone.”

Tactic Gone Bad

The killing of five residents in a night raid last month in Nahhalin, a West Bank village, was an example of such a tactic gone bad. Border police entered, were met with stones and responded by “firing all over the place,” as an army spokesman put it. They left without accomplishing their mission of arresting anti-Israeli activists.

Undercover activities, such as plainclothes raids and selective ambushes, have also become more common.

Segev contended that the changes in the uprising have made it possible for the army to reduce its presence without losing control. The Palestinians are tired and have turned over responsibility for keeping the revolt going to small groups of “popular committees.” Many organizers have been caught, Segev said, leaving Palestinians with no one to lead their protests.

“The Palestinians have achieved what they wanted--to put their case before the world at large,” he said. “Now most of them want peace.”

Segev said that other means of punishing the Palestinians would be kept in place: continued closure of schools, increased collection of taxes, arrests and the demolition of the houses of Palestinians suspected of throwing stones or taking part in other violence.

More than 415 Arabs have died at the hands of Israeli troops since the beginning of the uprising 17 months ago and thousands have been wounded. Eighteen Israelis have been killed.

Weighing against the army’s diminished role in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are side-effects that appear to favor the Palestinians. For example, the partial abandonment of neighborhoods and villages for long periods has left Arabs who collaborate with the Israelis vulnerable to intimidation and outright attack. Last month, 14 suspected collaborators were killed by other Palestinians.

This violence hinders Israel’s ability to gather information on rebel activity at a time when such information is becoming more important to the army’s sparse coverage, Segev said.

Palestinian activists are using a perceived atmosphere of freedom to try to bolster their own authority in neighborhoods and villages. Unofficial Arab police officers have been reported roaming the streets keeping order and collecting taxes from merchants.

In Kfar Malek, militants are trying to hold informal classes to replace schools closed by the West Bank government and to persuade people to stop buying Israeli products.

The April 5 taxi raid has made the residents of Kfar Malek wary of outsiders. Whenever a strange vehicle begins to descend into the village from the surrounding ridges, boys whistle warnings and wanted activists take cover.

Other than the flags and graffiti, the people of Kfar Malek have little means of aggressively expressing nationalist feelings. There is no major road nearby, and no Israeli, settler or otherwise, must pass through the village to get from one place to another.

Young boys practice their marksmanship by throwing rocks and twirling slingshots in the local cemetery. An 8-year-old, encouraged by older boys to demonstrate his slingshot of yarn and string, blushed when his rock went awry and almost hit a pair of visiting reporters.

“I haven’t thrown for a long time,” he said apologetically. “Since the soldiers stopped coming, we don’t have much to aim at.”