Under Pressure to End Uprising, Sharon Weighs Israel’s Options

Carved into the beige desert by Israeli army engineers, a winding trench--roughly 12 feet deep, 5 feet wide, 10 miles long--skirts the eastern flank of this ancient city.

Not unlike a moat, it’s designed to impede Palestinian motorists, as well as anyone on foot, trying to leave the city and make their way into Israel or other parts of the West Bank.

Fortifying physical barriers between Israelis and Palestinians is just one of an array of options at the disposal of Ariel Sharon, who becomes prime minister of Israel today.

The hawkish Sharon will be confronted immediately with demands from the people who elected him, by an overwhelming majority, to put a halt to escalating violence in the region. He has made it clear that he holds Yasser Arafat and his troops responsible for terrorist attacks, and top military officers want the Palestinian Authority president to be formally declared an enemy of Israel.

The Palestinian uprising that erupted more than five months ago and has claimed more than 400 lives shows no sign of abating. If anything, Palestinians have stepped up attacks in the days after Sharon’s Feb. 6 election, prompting Israeli authorities to threaten stiffer economic sanctions and a wider military offensive.

But Sharon’s options will be limited by realities, logistics and international pressures. He faces tough decisions and is armed with the same arsenal of helicopter gunships and tanks that his predecessor, Ehud Barak, employed before becoming a political casualty of the unrest.

“We will make every effort to achieve [peace], but the reality around us reminds us that the struggle for the land of Israel is not over,” Sharon, who heads the right-wing Likud Party, said Tuesday. “Our neighbors have recognized our military might but have not yet recognized our right to the country.”

Sharon will come under enormous domestic pressure to crack down on the Palestinians, but, mindful of his quest to cleanse his own controversial image, he might be reluctant to invite international scorn by taking actions the world sees as overly harsh.

Ideas on the table range from reoccupying territory under Palestinian control, to tighter sanctions that target the Palestinian leadership, to unilateral separation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Sharon has repeatedly said he doesn’t intend to seize sections of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Arafat rules. But he is likely to continue the practice of commando-style operations into Palestinian zones to kill or capture Palestinians suspected of attacks on Israelis, or to blow up Palestinian weapons stockpiles or other infrastructure, aides said.

He also wants to drive a wedge between the Palestinian people and their leaders, whom Israel accuses of organizing and encouraging the bloodshed. Sharon would be willing to ease some of the draconian closures that keep most Palestinian workers out of Israel and impoverish ordinary Palestinians, his aides say, while targeting the pocketbooks and privileges of Palestinian leaders.

“The guiding principle [will be] to focus activity against those who commit the attacks and those who send them, and to minimize, as far as possible, collectively punishing the general Palestinian population,” said incoming Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

This would mean hurting the business enterprises and monopolies of senior members of Arafat’s inner circle and continuing to yank the VIP cards that give them and their vehicles unfettered access to Israel.

Sharon says his long-term plan is to resume limited talks with the Palestinians once calm is restored. The negotiations would be aimed at reaching an interim “nonbelligerency” pact that might yield a small amount of land to the Palestinians but would not attempt a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the shorter term, rather than easing closures, Sharon and the army are more likely to press ahead with measures keeping Palestinians out of Israel as a way to prevent terrorist attacks. After a terrorist bombing Sunday that claimed four lives, and amid threats of additional attacks, thousands of police officers and soldiers have flooded Israeli cities and towns that border the West Bank. But they acknowledge that the dividing line is a “virtual border” that cannot be hermetically sealed.

Israeli authorities also are rounding up Palestinian workers who are in Israel illegally, and fining or arresting the Israelis who hire them.

As the trench around Jericho illustrates, Israeli forces in recent weeks have fortified their blockade of numerous West Bank and Gaza towns. In Jericho, a strict Israeli army checkpoint chokes the main entrance to the once-popular tourist town; large concrete slabs cordon off the second, back entrance.

A military spokesman said the purpose of the trench is to deprive Palestinians easy access to the main road, where Jewish motorists have come under sporadic fire lately. The Jericho ditch is a test case and might be repeated at other West Bank towns, he said.

Other barriers, such as earthen batteries and berms, metal poles, electric fences, surveillance cameras and watchtowers, are being constructed or planned, officials said. The construction is seen as an interim step toward a permanent separation between Israel and Palestinian zones--another proposal that Sharon has not yet signed off on.

The incoming Sharon government also is discussing whether to declare Arafat and his regime an enemy. Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, army chief of staff, began laying the groundwork last week by branding the Palestinian Authority a “terrorist entity.”

That label makes it easier to impose tough economic and military sanctions on the Palestinians but makes negotiations much more complicated.

“They have to understand we will consider them an enemy entity,” Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said.

Whatever options Sharon chooses, he will have a wide basis of support in parliament, at least initially. The government he will head as of today is Israel’s largest ever and represents well over half of the 120-member legislative body.

Despite hard-line talk from several members of Sharon’s new Cabinet, observers also point to the inclusion of Labor Party elder statesman Shimon Peres in the government as a mitigating influence.

“I assume that even Sharon doesn’t want . . . this whole country to be drenched in blood,” said Peres, the Nobel peace laureate who will serve as Sharon’s foreign minister. “If we proceed only with sticks, what will we achieve? We will push this entire population to support terror.”

A poll this week by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research in Tel Aviv shows that a huge majority, nearly 72%, of the Jewish public regards Arafat as more of a terrorist than a statesman. And opinion is divided over whether the right solution to the unrest is to simply unleash the military: 41% support a military solution, and 50% don’t think it will work.

“Contrary to the Americans, Israelis don’t really care how Sharon makes good on his pledge [to restore security], as long as there is quiet,” commentator Hemi Shalev noted in the Israeli daily Maariv. “Israelis are also interested in stability, but many, including the great majority of Sharon’s prospective ministers, believe we will achieve it only after we stick it to Arafat, big-time. . . . After all, Sharon was brought in because he is the ultimate sheriff.”