Covert Conflict Erupts in ‘Battle’

Understanding the fighters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now dominating headlines is a step in trying to understand the fight. Tonight’s gripping “Frontline” documentary “Battle for the Holy Land” (9 p.m., KCET; 10 p.m., KVCR) went inside covert operations on both sides in December to explain their different strategies, weaponry and intelligence gathering.

For the outgunned Palestinians, the battle is waged through “the balance of terror,” as Ali Safouri, an Islamic Jihad leader, puts it. That is achieved in part by striking Israeli soldiers and civilians with suicide bombings. The film interviews not only an engineer who builds the explosive belts used in such attacks but also a would-be suicide bomber who concludes, “I hope to be martyred after this meeting.”

For the well-armed Israelis, the strategy is to target “only the people who actually fight against us,” says Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland. Apache helicopters with missiles are one major weapon, as shown in a Dec. 10 ambush of a suspected Palestinian militant’s car. He wasn’t killed, but two children were.

On another Israeli mission, in one of the show’s most heart-pounding sequences, the film follows commandos storming the house of a man convicted in Israel of being a Hamas terrorist. Shots are fired by both sides, as women and children watch. The man is safely captured--a textbook operation. But the cycle of violence continues.