Israel Boosts Its Policy of Retaliation

Even as Israeli officials declared that an invasion of a West Bank town Tuesday was part of a strategy to discourage terrorist acts, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a Jewish community near here and the militant group Hamas promised to step up its campaign of suicide bombings.

As Israeli tanks were rolling away from the Palestinian-controlled town of Jenin, having bulldozed a police station, Palestinians set up machine guns in the town of Beit Jala near Jerusalem and sent bullets whizzing across a valley into Gilo, a nearby Jewish suburb.

“The Palestinian people are committed to continuing the uprising, and Israel must be punished,” said Jalal Jalad, a local leader in Jenin of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

This was not the response Israel intended, though after 10 months of what officials here call a “low-grade war,” it could not have come as much of a surprise.

Israeli officials repeated Tuesday that the government’s tit-for-tat policy is designed to make sure the Palestinians do not achieve political success through terror and to convince the Palestinian public that an independent state will not be gained through violent means. The officials said Jenin was targeted because several suicide bombers have come from that town.

There were reports from Palestinians this morning that Israeli troops and tanks had massed near Beit Jala and east Bethlehem. But, apparently under pressure from the U.S., Israeli defense forces avoided invading any Palestinian-controlled territories. On Tuesday, though, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised that Israel would continue to exact a price for Palestinian violence and vowed that Gilo, across a valley from Beit Jala, would soon be safe.

“We don’t have other choices” than to strike back, said a high-ranking Israeli military official who spoke Tuesday on the condition that he not be identified. “I am asking you, what would you do in such a situation? . . . There is no real effort by the Palestinians to stop the violence.”

But what the Israelis hoped would be taken as a demonstration that violence does not pay, the Palestinian Authority labeled a declaration of war. From Hebron to Bethlehem, Palestinian gunmen clashed throughout the day with Israeli forces in the West Bank amid growing signs of popular support among Palestinians for armed resistance.

Though Israel hopes that Palestinians will ultimately blame their own leadership for the way the uprising has affected their daily lives, the opposite appears to be true. Israeli officials, not Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, get blamed for every road closure and every military strike.

“For me, as an average person, I am not interested in politics. I want to take care of my family and feed my children, like people anywhere,” said Yusef Ismael, 27, who has been unable to get to work in Jerusalem for three days because of a military checkpoint near his village of Kalandiyeh in the West Bank. “What Israel is doing is to try to prevent suicide bombings, but it is just making more people want to be suicide bombers.”

In Ismael’s village, a dusty concrete community of narrow roads and cobblestone homes, hundreds of posters have been hung of Ali Julani. The 30-year-old Julani, who had three children and a pregnant wife, opened fire Aug. 5 with a short-barreled M-16 assault rifle near a military compound in Tel Aviv. He injured 10 people before he was fatally wounded.

Julani had a good job in interior design and a permit that allowed him to work in Israel. He was not affiliated with a militant group or political party. His attack shook his family as much as it shook Israelis, because it seemed to demonstrate how the pressures on the Palestinians can make anyone snap.

“We ourselves don’t know why he did it; he had a stable life,” said Hassan Julani, his 29-year-old brother. “But as I said, everyone living here faces obstacles; the biggest is the checkpoint. For four days I have not been able to get to work.”

On the wall surrounding the family’s two-story home someone had spray-painted a slogan in Arabic: “They kill you because of fear; they kill you from the back; they kill you because of hatred. We are greeting you, Ali Julani.”

In the divided city of Hebron, controlled in part by the Palestinians and in part by the Israeli military, Abdel Karim Jrewei, 47, sat outside his mother-in-law’s house Tuesday. His eyes were red, his fingers were flicking silver worry beads.

His 10-year-old daughter, Sabreen, had been shot in the head and killed two days earlier when she walked onto the roof of the family house to check on her 3-year-old brother, Mohammed. The children were on the roof because the Israeli military had imposed a curfew and they could not play outside.

Sabreen was hit by an Israeli bullet in circumstances the government says it is investigating. When Wadhi Mayyalah, her grandmother, heard about the shooting, she had a heart attack and died. Jrewei, his friends and relatives, who sat with him, placed none of the blame on Palestinians who routinely shoot at Israeli positions in Hebron. The fault, they said, rested entirely on Israel.

“It is our legitimate right to fight them,” the father said. “It is occupation. It is our land. They have no right to be here. If they want peace, they have to leave us.”

Abde Adel, a slight 13-year-old who was a friend of Sabreen, proudly displayed marks on his arm and his leg, scars he said are from having been shot by rubber bullets while throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. “When I grow up, I want to be a Hamas militant and help plan suicide bombings,” he said.

As Abde beamed and the adults around him smiled, a woman came in looking for her husband. She said her 9-year-old son had collapsed at home, overcome by tear gas he was exposed to while throwing rocks at soldiers. Asked if she had warned her son to stay away from the troops, she said calmly: “Oh, no. I want him to be brave.”

She said she has six sons and encourages all of them to throw stones. “God willing, they will all become martyrs,” she said.

Israeli officials are hoping that their strict payback policy will eventually wear away at such resolve and force the Palestinian leadership--if not the people--to blink first.

Though he agreed this week to allow Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to carry on cease-fire talks with the Palestinians, Sharon threatened Tuesday to seize additional property--even though his government has been criticized at home and abroad for taking control of Orient House, the Palestinians’ de facto headquarters in Jerusalem.

“If Palestinian violence continues, the Palestinians will lose further property,” he told a meeting of high-ranking police officers, “and from today on there will be no more violation of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and no more terror activities.”

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