Israeli Raids Push Both Sides Near the Abyss

A struggle that began with rocks and bullets and quickly moved to roadside bombs and helicopter gunships has jumped to a precarious new level, as Israelis and Palestinians hurtle toward what an increasing number on both sides fear could be full-fledged war.

By unleashing fighter jets Friday against population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Middle East’s mightiest army crossed a Rubicon in its attempts to crush a bloody Palestinian revolt. It was the deadliest single day in nearly eight months of strife.

When the current intifada started, few would have predicted that the conflict could reach this level, and it is harder still to say what will come next.

Friday’s aerial bombardment--in retaliation for a horrific suicide bombing--might have served as a salve for anxious Israelis stripped of a once-prevalent feeling of security and prosperity. They elected their prime minister, the 73-year-old hawk Ariel Sharon, three months ago based on his promises of putting an end to violence and threats.

In the long term, however, increasingly aggressive military tactics like the F-16 bombardments could backfire. Seen as heavy-handed in much of the world, the tactics invite international rebuke, are unlikely to stop the fighting, and play into the hands of extremist opponents, such as the radical Islamic group Hamas, that seek to polarize, escalate and destroy all chances of dialogue.

For Palestinians, who have endured the brunt of death, destruction and economic deprivation, the worsening circumstances seal a deepening despair that any solution can be found. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat might want to negotiate, but he cannot capitulate, least of all to his archenemy Sharon.

Arab nations served notice Saturday that they regard Israel’s decision to deploy warplanes against West Bank and Gaza targets for the first time since the 1967 Middle East War as egregious, and they recommended cutting off political ties with the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, ignoring a U.S. plea for an unconditional cease-fire, Israel again pounded West Bank towns, using helicopters to rocket police headquarters in Jenin and Tulkarm. About 50 people were hurt.

In Nablus, more than 100,000 angry Palestinians filled the streets for a mass funeral for fallen comrades. Eleven Palestinian policemen were killed, and dozens of police and civilians injured, in Friday evening airstrikes that flattened buildings in Nablus and Ramallah. Israel staged the raids in reprisal for a bombing by a Palestinian who blew himself up at a busy Israeli shopping mall. Five Israelis were killed and more than 100 suffered wounds in the worst such incident in four years.

Practically the entire city of Nablus turned out for the funerals, as 11 flag-draped bodies were carried from the hospital to the mosque and then on to their burial in outlying villages. Men fired assault rifles into the air and volunteered to become the next suicide bomber. Judging from shouted slogans, their rage was directed more at the United States for supplying Israel with its weapons than at Israel for using them.

Hussam Khader, an elected official from Nablus and leader of the Fatah movement, said the tougher Israeli response will not frighten Palestinian militants but will further radicalize them.

“The escalation will only bring more groups onto the battlefield,” Khader said in an interview from Nablus after he marched in the funeral cortege.

“We will see more people who will think that as a result of the use of F-16 fighters, the only way to face [the Israelis] is to create an equilibrium in the balance of terror inside the Israeli society, so that they will understand that this cycle of killing Palestinians has to stop,” he said.

Israeli officials insisted that the airstrikes were “pinpointed” and a matter of self-defense.

“We are in a real war with people who want to eliminate Israel,” Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin told reporters. “We can’t fight with our hands bound.”

But criticism was mounting here and abroad. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the use of warplanes as a response to the “appalling” suicide bombing was disproportionate and misdirected. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin telephoned Sharon on Saturday to ask that “all measures” be taken to stop the fighting, and the Russian Foreign Ministry declared that the airstrikes were “clearly improper use of military force.”

Even Israel’s defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, expressed reservations, saying during an appearance in Tel Aviv that he was “not exactly happy” to have to authorize “bombastic actions.”

In television comments Saturday night--the first opportunity for public airing of opinion after the Jewish Sabbath--Israeli analysts were highly critical of Friday’s operation, which no one seemed to believe would stop the violence or force the parties back to the negotiating table.

“What is Israel actually trying to accomplish with these attacks?” asked military affairs correspondent Alon Ben-David. “It appears to be providing Arafat with exactly what he wants: to appear as victim in the eyes of the world. This is making excellent footage for Arafat and the Palestinians.”

Israel’s senior opposition leader, Yossi Sarid, warned that Israel was “shooting itself in the foot.”

“It is clear that the terrorists are interested in many victims on our side, as well as on their own,” Sarid said. “Therefore the government is mistaken when it fulfills the terrorists’ wishes and perpetuates the cycle of violence.”

Palestinian leaders denounced, again, Israeli “state terrorism,” and Arafat rushed off to a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo to seek support. But the aging Arafat and Sharon are locked in a standoff that neither can readily escape. Sharon says he will not talk publicly with Arafat until the Palestinian leader stops the violence. Arafat, however, cannot stop the violence until he has something to show for the last months of strife.

Sharon is under growing international pressure to make a first gesture even as he confronts a vituperative right wing of Jewish settlers and uncompromising hard-liners. He has political rivals, such as former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nipping at his heels, and, perhaps most significant, a restive armed forces champing at the bit and demanding an even freer hand to act against the Palestinians.

Already, the army has been granted considerable leeway. Friday’s warplanes followed an array of aggressive tactics that Sharon has plucked from Israel’s arsenal, including the targeted, extrajudicial killings of key Palestinian militants and near-daily incursions into Palestinian-ruled territory, where Israeli troops raze homes and orchards to clear positions they say Palestinians are firing from.

With warplanes, instead of the more regularly used Apache helicopter gunships, Israel sends a much stronger message and can drop munitions of a far more lethal caliber.

But the risks of collateral damage are high. Consider the case of Gisele Toubasi, whose extended family was celebrating her daughter’s engagement at a lavish party in Ramallah’s elegant Grand Park Hotel on Friday evening. Suddenly, an F-16 roared through the sky above and dropped missiles onto the police headquarters across the street.

The explosion blew out most of the hotel’s windows, sent furniture hurling through the air and crumbled parts of the building’s facade. Children and hotel workers were among the injured.

“We had just cut the cake when we heard the explosion,” Toubasi, 55, said. “People dove under the tables, everyone was shouting and running for their children, and everyone was covered in glass. There was a lot of panic.

“We felt as if we were on the Titanic.”