Israeli Crackdown Strains Relations With Palestinians

Israel’s security crackdown in the Gaza Strip and West Bank is badly straining already fragile relations between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, officials on both sides said Sunday.

Palestinian forces have been forced to stand aside as Israeli troops imposed curfews, restricted the movement of Palestinians between villages, sealed and demolished the family homes of suicide bombers and conducted house-to-house searches and mass arrests in an effort to uproot the militant Islamic group Hamas.

So far, Israel has stayed within the letter of the peace pact it signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993 and subsequent agreements. But Palestinians complain that the Israelis are undermining their authority and violating the spirit of cooperation between security forces that was intended to be a cornerstone of the accord.

And the Israelis may yet send troops into Gaza City or Palestinian towns in the West Bank to search out Hamas militants whom the Israelis have demanded the Palestinians arrest.

Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak threatened to do just that in an Israel Television interview Friday night. Atty. Gen. Michael Ben-Yair reportedly has issued a legal opinion that justifies such an incursion into Palestinian-controlled areas.

Palestinian security officers interviewed Sunday expressed understanding for Israel’s security concerns but complained that the Israelis are going too far in their efforts to uproot Hamas.

“It is very painful,” Col. Yunis Asi, leader of Palestinian forces in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said in a telephone interview.

Asi and other Palestinian commanders complained that the Israelis are operating unilaterally in areas where the Palestinian police are supposed to be responsible for maintaining civil order and the Israelis retain “overall” security responsibility.

“We began the peace process together as partners, but in light of the situation, the Israelis have been taking unilateral measures,” said Col. Fayez Arafat, commander of Palestinian forces in the West Bank town of Janin. “We understand the situation they are in and the security claims that they are making, but they must also understand the effect of the security measures on the Palestinian people.”

For its part, Israel maintains that it gave the self-governing Palestinian Authority ample time to act against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two militant Islamic groups that have carried out a string of suicide bus bombings so devastating they threaten to derail the peacemaking effort.

The Israelis said that after repeatedly urging Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to crack down, they are now going after Hamas themselves in areas they control, such as East Jerusalem, and in more than 400 West Bank villages where they share security responsibilities with the Palestinians.

“What I am interested in now is the security of our citizens, our borders,” said Col. Moshe Elad, head of the Regional Security Committee that oversees Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation in the West Bank. “I am not so much involved in the feelings of Palestinian police force members.”

The so-called second Oslo accord, signed in September, established an elaborate framework of security cooperation. It divided the West Bank into three zones. By December, Israel had withdrawn its troops from all Palestinian towns in the West Bank except Hebron and from more than 400 Palestinian villages. The towns came under exclusive Palestinian control. Israel retained “overall security responsibility” for the villages and retained sole security responsibility for all Jewish settlements, most main roads, all military bases and most undeveloped land tracts.

Until recently, both Israelis and Palestinians said that security cooperation was working well in the West Bank. The two sides cited joint Israeli-Palestinian patrols on main roads, cooperation between the forces in apprehending drug smugglers and car thieves, and increased intelligence-sharing as examples of how they were successfully cooperating.

But a pair of suicide bombings carried out by Hamas militants Feb. 25 in Jerusalem and the coastal city of Ashkelon, shattered Israel’s confidence in the ability and will of Palestinian security forces to break up Hamas cells and foil bombings.

When a third attack was carried out in Jerusalem on March 3, and then a fourth in Tel Aviv a day later, Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad and warned that his security forces would operate freely to crush the infrastructures of the organizations.

Peres was fighting not only to restore a sense of security to the Israeli public but also to save his political life. Facing national elections May 29 and an opposition declaring the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement a failure, he could not afford to spare the Palestinian Authority’s feelings.

For nearly two weeks, the Israelis have maintained unrelenting pressure on Arafat to join wholeheartedly in the war on Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the bombings (although a member of Islamic Jihad carried out the Tel Aviv bombing).

Backed by the Clinton administration, Peres’ government has banned Palestinians from entering Israel from the territories.

The Israelis have handed their most-wanted list to Arafat and insisted that he extend his arrests to include both political and military leaders of Hamas.

Arafat has reportedly arrested more than 300 Hamas activists, including at least five of the 13 men Israel most wants to see under lock and key, but the Israelis say he must do more if he intends to keep the Israeli army out of territories he controls.

Arafat got a boost from Washington on Sunday, with U.S. officials praising him for new vigor in cracking down on the extremists. But they warned that they will keep a watchful eye to make sure that his efforts do not slack off and that he in no way appeases Hamas.

Clinton will visit the Middle East this week for a major antiterrorism conference, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Sunday that he hopes the peace process, paralyzed by the recent deadly bombings, can be saved through a show of international solidarity.

“One thing this conference can do is firm him [Arafat] up in the decision to move aggressively against the military wing of Hamas,” Christopher said.

But a senior Israeli security official in the Gaza Strip, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “There are arrests and then there are arrests. We want to see real arrests, followed by real interrogations and real prison sentences.”

Times staff writer James Risen in Washington contributed to this report.